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New 13-inch MacBook Pro

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726 pointsgshakir1,079 comments

Bringing back the escape key is such a admission of their original screw up. I'm glad they admitted it and reversed the design decision. But I'm still on a 2012 15" MacBook that's running strong. I normally would have updated but using my work 15" has been horrific between the dongles, the keyboard randomly dropping keys (last week "G" would not work, now it's back. The most infuriating thing about the touch bar, out of many things, is the fact that the Escape Key doesn't line up with the upper left, it's offset. So decades of muscle memory has to change by s quarter inch. What a pain in the ass. Yes I'm a vi user.

I'm still surprised that so many people are stuck on the Escape key but it's probably no surprise that the ones that are stuck are all developers using vi or emacs. I love the Touch Bar and had no problem adjusting/remapping and find the utility of the Touch Bar for video and audio editing to be invaluable now. I wasn't sold on it before but, over the last year or so, I'll be really disappointed if they remove it. Adding the escape key back seems like a good compromise for both parties, imho.

I am still surprised that Apple doesn't give the option of non-touchbar. Why is that? A good compromise would be to have both options, imho.

By limiting the customization, it reduces the complexity of supply chains and thus reduces cost.

So where are the savings? Certainly not passed down to the customer.

Plus, Apple is not known for hardware cost-savings as being a primary factor in their key decisions.

> So where are the savings?

Apple is a business and prices its products based on demand. If people are willing to pay a high price, you bet they're going to charge a high price. The savings from not having many hardware variations on a single model are simply accumulated into their bank account.

And they might not cut costs when it comes to the hardware itself, but they are known for having a limited number of options and customizations when it comes to hardware.

I suspect nobody uses that entire row, so if you're not going to do anything with it besides an escape key, you may as well throw in something interesting.

If that's the case where are the external magic keyboards with touchbars?

Price? I have no idea what the markup on the touchbar is, but I'd guess it's at least in the $50 range, no?

When you're buying a $1650-4000 machine, $50-100 probably isn't gonna make potential buyers balk.

When you're buying a $99 keyboard, $150 is a fairly big difference. And honestly given the $99 price tag on Magic Keyboard, I'd guess Magic Keyboard + Touch bar would be like $199 at least. How many people do you think would buy it at that price tag? You also have to consider that Magic Keyboard currently works with windows, linux, etc, so the potential users are much wider than a Touch bar enabled keyboard, which would only work as intended with macs.

I think a lot of people balk at the price of Macs because it includes useless expensive features.

Where's the iPod Touch of Mac OS?

The Air and the mini.

I assume it's some combination of price, performance, and battery life on the external keyboard.

You can use the Touch Bar on your iPad (using an app like Duet Display, or even with Sidecar if you have a modern MacBook). I find it to be useful in certain situations.

I've got and used several non-apple laptops that use the row for media keys, and switch them to the function keys with a press of a dedicated fn key at the bottom.

I don't use function keys, but do use the media keys (mostly volume and screen brightness) by touch. The touch bar is hilariously named imho, because you have to look at it to use it.

Apple doesn't compromise. You either conform to the borgthink, or you go elsewhere.

If you want to Think Different, you don't want apple.

Given that Apple is the only one offering computers with touchbars, I think they are still the Think Different camp.

No, they are in "move fast and break things" camp.

One doesn’t have to exclude the other.

I've used the touch bar for years, and frankly, it's provided me zero value whatsoever. The only thing I use it for is occasionally adjusting volume or brightness but of course I can no longer do that without looking down at what I'm manipulating. Third party apps have totally ignored it. The physical escape key is the second useful thing in the entire function row, but hey at least it's got two useful things now (an escape key and a touch ID/power button), so that's a 100% increase!

I went so far as to build a physical escape key -- #couragekey -- a few years back (just as a joke, but it does work) https://twitter.com/martinmroz/status/995003391314083840

I just put in my order!

[edit] also the #couragekey was a really fun project to put together, I think I'll write it up to commemorate a real escape key coming back.

I was of the same opinion as you until I discovered Pock: it's a small tool that puts the dock (and optional controls) in the touchbar. This means I can get more screen real estate while keeping my dock accessible. Frankly I'm now pretty much onboard with the touchbar, except for the probably huge battery consumption.

Auto-Hide dock is easier to reach than touchbar.

I realize a lot of people are big fans of hiding their dock. I find it annoying because there are too many moves instead of darting your eyes. When walking up to a random computer it's worse because I often find those people have moved the dock and I have to check each corner one at a time.

I've had the dock hidden for so long I've almost forgot it existed. I do all my app launching and switching with spotlight and keyboard shortcuts. But just recently I was having a hell of a time locating the trash folder in the filesystem or in a finder window, and thought they might have gotten rid of it or something. Then I remembered the good ol' dock icon.

I wouldn't mind the dock being visible when I'm using my large external monitor, but it just takes up too much space on a 13/15inch screen imo.

You can program your touchbar with something like BetterTouchTool. It's laughable that Apple ships the touchbar with such useless functionalities, but you can turn the touchbar into whatever you want, it's an amazing tool. For example, when I open iTerm I have buttons for my local development env (DB, redis, api, frontend, various microservices) color-coded by status and can start/stop them by tapping a button. You could program buttons for your git workflow, for managing browser tabs, desk spaces... If you can't find a way to make it more useful than fn keys, that's on you frankly.

All of that only applies if you're a dev, so I definitely agree that the touchbar was a fuckup from Apple, but it happens that it's massively useful for me

Nothing you describe relies on touchbar, only Fn keys

The visible status and feedback on what pressing the bar will do isn't replicatable with just Fn keys.

It feels like neither's a complete solution: on the touch bar you see what touching a button would do, but you have to look, and even then you don't know if you've touched it since there's no feedback.

On the keyboard, you don't know what a key would do in a given situation.

Sounds like we need a third option.

SAY NO MORE

you do have feedback with the touchbar! As I recently learned, the trackpad click isn't really a click. It can be triggered by software! And bettertouchtool has a specific action for "touchpad haptic feedback". That means you can trigger a touchpad click when you tap a touchbar button, and it perfectly fine as feedback.

Yes you do have to look. I'm not recommending touchbar actions for things that you do so often that it's a problem (though I have a big button to switch between firefox and vscode, big enough that I don't have to look). But it's not like I was using fn keys without looking either

That's really cool, I'ma give it a shot!

There's always https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard but it sounds like it was extremely expensive and hard to type on.

It's not necessarily true you have to look. BTT lets you define actions for sliding 2/3/4 fingers left or right on the entirety of the touchbar. You can set it up to change volume, brightness, ctrl+tab, change the size of a drawing tool, undo/redo, whatever. It works anywhere on the strip, so it's very forgiving.

I actually only just now thought of mapping 3-finger swipe to undo/redo. I've only been messing around with it for five minutes but it's kind of nice, honestly! It's better than cmd+z when you need to undo/redo more than once, because it bypasses the key repeat setting.

I think the bit where the labels change is a pretty big differentiator, for things that are per-app.

Are you old enough to remember when PC applications came with templates that fit over a 101 key keyboard to show you what all the fn keys did? That's why very little outside professional tooling uses them for anything but system-wide shortcuts anymore. They're horrible for discoverability so unless you live in the app enough to thoroughly memorize them they aren't terribly useful.

As much as I don't care for the Hot Bar in general, it is far better for per-app shortcuts that are used rarely enough not to require (and thus develop) muscle memory. You'd need one of those OLED keyboards to do much better.

Wow that sounds awesome. You can do this with just BetterTouchTool? Could you share your config?

Well, and a few shell scripts that do the glue between docker-compose and an output that BTT can easily understand. You can write shell/applescript with BTT, but it's not really a good experience

I can see state indicators for various services being remotely useful. But git workflow? I have terminals open anyway and everything is easily accessible from shell using aliases and ^R etc anyway.

Is there a way to decouple touchbar from active window btw? For example if I have Skype running I'd like to have Skype's buttons on touchbar regardless of focused window. I tried using BetterTouchTool but all I found out was quite hacky ways to mimic keypresses and whatnot instead of pinning app specific UIs.

> But git workflow?

Useless to me too, that's just an example out a million things you could do.

> Is there a way to decouple touchbar from active window btw

You can, touchbar items are global, app-scoped or part of a group that you can open/close programatically (clicking on a touchbar button, usually). The annoying bit is syncing: you'll need to poll for the state of Skype.

> You can program your touchbar with something like BetterTouchTool.

I just have no use for a touchbar. After all, I have a screen! I never look at my keyboard.... it’s all about tactile feedback, which the touchbar notoriously lacks.

> I just have no use for a touchbar

I find this very narrow-minded. You can't imagine a single thing that a programmable tactile interface would bring over keys (that you probably can't reliably touch-type either, fn keys are far)?

I never looked at my keyboard either. I still don't, I look at my touchbar from time to time to do things that would take me longer to do if I had to move a cursor (checking the time, my next calendar event, controlling music amongst a dozen things)

I agree that there are probably some cool uses for the touch bar if you put some thought in to tailoring it to your work flow, but it is not a tactile interface. Keys are a tactile interface. You can't discern anything from the touchbar by touch, its a flat piece of glass.

Personally, I've never spent any time trying to customize the touch bar because I am never using my laptop without an external keyboard, because of how fuckin' terrible the built in one is. So happy they added some travel back to the keys. I have put off buying a new laptop for years because of how much I hate that stupid keyboard.

> I still don't, I look at my touchbar from time to time to do things that would take me longer to do if I had to move a cursor (checking the time, my next calendar event, controlling music amongst a dozen things)

Moving the mouse doesn't really bother me, and there are a million ways to wire functionality to keyboard expressions or in-UI functionality. I do miss my hardware volume, prev track, next track, play/pause functionality exactly because I could use them easily without shifting focus at all, even to my keyboard.

OTOH I'm not holding my breath for Apple to meet my needs, they aren't that kind of company.

I mean, you can always use more screen. On my touchbar I display the time, battery, weather. I also have a script to start a timer and display the time remaining on it (or the output of any script, really). It saves some screen estate. It's nice!

Also there are actions you can program on the touchbar that don't require looking at it. For instance I set it up so that sliding two fingers anywhere on the touchbar changes the volume.

Personally I find more screen real estate doesn’t do anything for my productivity, which is rarely mechanically limited.

I find it a lot harder to adjust the volume with touchbar compared to the old keys. It used to be something I could do really quick and accurate, now I have to look down and try to adjust a slider.

> and find the utility of the Touch Bar for video and audio editing to be invaluable now.

See, the problem is that I rarely use the laptop's own keyboard. Only in cases where I'm actually on the go. If I'm at the office or at home, I'll have an external keyboard (and monitor).

While the laptop's own display remains useful, the keyboard becomes awkward to reach. The touchbar, even more so.

Now, if Apple's external keyboard had a touch bar, now that would be useful.

At this point, I would definitely use an external keyboard or even just an external Touch Bar (unless Apple releases mechanical keyboards with a Touch Bar). I kinda rely on it for media editing/scrubbing.

I personally use Vi and so do others I hear from (as in HN) but other than that it would probably never come up as an issue. For the record, you can remap Caps lock to Esc which is as good, if not better than escape. I use this on my iPad and other keyboards as well (even with the esc key)

A bit tricky when I have Caps Lock remapped to Control, like any self-respecting emacs user!

Do both!

You can use karabiner elements to remap CAPS LOCK so that it’s ESCAPE when tapped and CONTROL when held.

I also map my Caps Lock to Control, but don't forget that Ctrl + [ is the equivalent of Escape in vi/vim. It's a chord, but it ends up being much more convenient for me since the keys are both comfortably around the home row keys.

I think one of the main points is that you shouldn't have to.

I agree but, as I said initially, I only see this in the developer crowd. I just don't hear that type of criticism from any other segment in any of the companies I work with.

The problem is most heavy computer users set themselves up with a proper ergonomic setup, i.e. external keyboard. And by not building the touch bar into external keyboards, they killed the entire concept of the Touch Bar, because any "pro" application has to assume that you may or may not have a touch bar and can't put essential functionality there. Which limits the Touch Bar to proper first-class support primarily in Apple first-party apps.

Touch bar is stupid idea because it is so narrow,and located in such place that it is hard to see it clearly due to the angle. If they really wanted to add touch capabilities to MacBook they should have put touch display in place of TouchPad, like Asus did: https://www.engadget.com/2018-06-05-asus-zenbook-pro-15-scre...

I guess the actual, underlying problem is, the Touchbar is bad UX for a bunch of software engineers, but pretty great for most everyone else. Think about it – you lose some keys you never really had a use for anyway except as media keys, and you get almost analogue-ish volume and brightness controls, apps can give you context-dependent options that are really discoverable (which F-keys totally aren't) and can adapt to your feature use patterns and be a lot richer than static bindings on 12 keys. As a musician, you get a neat little slider – no replacement for a proper external controller, but it's always there when needed, and it can change its behavior dependent on the context. As a photographer, you get a multi-function slider in post that feels (to me) a lot more precise than any touchpad acrobatics I'm capable of. Plus, and most importantly by a long way, it makes emoji really usable on MacOS, and emoji are super, super important stuff, it's hard to overstate their value. Text-based communication loses a lot of emotional cues, that's really hard to get used to if you're used to mostly in-person communication or at least voice, and in my experience keeps causing small (or not-so-small) misunderstandings and microdose vitriol even among people who have been doing this for ages and ages, been socialized in it, aren't too keen on lots of face-to-face, and detest emoji with a passion. Those are things that make the Touchbar a pretty neat feature for lots and lots of people, even given its many "legitimate" issues (it tends to micro-freeze for some people, it isn't as precise as it could be, lots of apps use it in not-well-thought-out ways, it's very hard to use blindly, ...) But not having F-keys is so disruptive to a lot of deeply-ingrained software development muscle memory and UI conventions transplanted from other OSes and other decades that I guess it just wouldn't fly with this crowd in pretty much any shape and form factor.

> but pretty great for most everyone else

Honestly I think most people would rather save $200-300 than have the touchbar.

If you look at the average mac user, not pros but regular office people, they use stuff like Launchpad and rarely use keyboard shortcuts. You'd be surprised how many macOS users don't even use Spotlight for instance.

Get the Air then. More than plenty horsepower for regular office work, even thinner and lighter and quite a bit cheaper and prettier (do they still have the gold one? I wish they'd offer that on the Pros...) If someone buys a Pro for some Excel and web browsing, I'd imagine those $200-300 didn't break the bank. People sometimes get one even though the Air would have been fine precisely because of the Touchbar (says my little bit of anecdata.) Besides, I guess the Touchbar would be especially neat exactly for those people who never use Spotlight, because it's extremely discoverable. With Spotlight, you either need to know it's there, or discover it on your own (which is going to be hard); it's similar with keyboard shortcuts. Tap "Search" on the Touchbar? Way easier. You don't need to be good with computers to find out how to do that.

> Get the Air then. More than plenty horsepower for regular office work

The passive CPU cooling on the Air is a deal breaker.

For an office laptop? A few Excel sheets, a dozen or two browser tabs, maybe something like Slack?

Yes, even constant low workloads will make the fan audible.

See the NotebookCheck review of the i5:

> At around 30% CPU load (installation of OS updates), the fan is clearly audible and we are already above 40 dB(A), which is hard to understand considering the low performance level.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-new-2020-MacBook-Air-Core-...

Weird. At any rate, it doesn't seem to be an issue that deters companies from issuing those things to employees, and looking at the Windows machines some companies issue, that's probably fine; at least it's not a gargantuan brick with a super outdated Atom CPU and Windows 7. Reading the other comments, even some devs are happy with Airs.

> Honestly I think most people would rather save $200-300 than have the touchbar.

This is such a silly comment. You actually have no idea.

Why is that?

I would pay Touch Bar prices for a MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar.

Me too actually :(

How does it help with emoji? I've found CMD+Ctrl+space to already work really well.

There is no way to discover Cmd+Ctrl+Space.

I've used Macs full time for 6 years and your post here right now is the first time I knew that was possible. OTOH I've been using Emojis in the touchbar since I got a Mac with one.

I tried to find something like that at least half a dozen times over the years and I didn't know this was possible, this is immensely helpful! Thank you!

The problem with function keys vs touchbar could have been fixed by embedding a small lcd in each key, or in a border above them. Its not like mac's have a shortage of vertical keyboard space given how much they waste on the trackpad.

That way you keep people happy who aren't looking down at the keys, and you give new users/etc nice graphics to help describe what the buttons do.

That eliminates one of the biggest benefits of the Touch Bar - the ability to use sliders and to scrub through media files. I'll keep the Touch Bar any day over LCD keys.

This is basically a repackaged "no true Scotsman" fallacy. We're talking about a laptop here. Most people that bought a laptop are using it because they need something portable and self-contained. On top of that, the Touch Bar isn't meant for "essential" functionality just like the F-keys were never meant for essential functionality. They were meant to be shortcuts for commonly used functions.

I use an external keyboard with the Touch Bar all the time. Pretending like you have to use one or the other is disingenuous.

I haven't had an issue with the Touch Bar, but only because 95% of my usage is through a connected mechanical keyboard; the 5% of time that I do use my laptop's keyboard + Touch Bar, I definitely do not enjoy it.

I can sort of understand the potential appeal of it, especially in terms of customization. But even though the Touch Bar is 3 years old, am I the only one who is reluctant to invest time in learning it (this includes learning how to fully customize and optimize it) because it seems like the kind of feature that may soon disappear into obsolescence? It doesn't help that it's the sort of hardware feature that is literally only applicable to 1 of 3 computers I currently use. But unlike other Apple-pioneered hardware features (multitouch trackpad, built-in Touch ID), Touch Bar seems very unlikely to eventually become a popular cross-platform feature.

Or, you know, literally any app where `esc` is the "cancel and exit this dialog" key. Which is every Adobe application, all DAWs, etc. etc.

I don't see how that's a negative. The Touch Bar still has an ESC segment that works exactly the same as the button and literally no one in any of the companies that I've worked with that's not a developer has ever had an issue with it while simultaneously finding the Touch Bar far more useful than unlabelled function keys.

I'm glad Apple disagrees with you and is no longer making computers which lack a physical escape key.

I got used to it pretty quickly, and I've had press-Alt mapped to Esc for many years.

It was always annoying, and the 16" with a physical Esc is much nicer.

Now all Apple has to do is add some haptic feedback to the damnable thing and I'll actually like it.

I don't think they do disagree with me. I'm not suggesting that the physical escape key isn't a better option for people. I'm just responding to the person that said the Touch Bar was broken because it didn't include a physical escape key. It's not broken. It works exactly the same, functionally, as the physical key so there's nothing you can do with the physical key that you can't do with the virtual key on the Touch Bar. The physical key is just better because it's tactile and now usable for all the devs that rely on it.

I think Apple putting the physical escape key back indicates that they agree it was broken, relative to a virtual escape key.

The only advantage to a virtual Esc is getting that piece of real estate if you don't happen to want one, and as has been pointed out elsewhere, Escape is an important affordance in macOS-land, even if you aren't a Vim user.

The important report here is a process freezing both the UI and the touch bar, and therefore option-command-escape being unavailable to bring up force quit. That's obviously bad, and I would call it broken. Edge case but an important one!

This is just a quibble about whether it's worse enough to deserve the moniker "broken", though. I'm not personally attached to that, just want to point out that it does in fact break an important action in the core vocabulary.

>I think Apple putting the physical escape key back indicates that they agree it was broken, relative to a virtual escape key.

No it doesn't. All that it indicates is that there was a preference for it by part of their demographic. Again, developers are in the minority here. Most Macbook users don't care and it was an easy concession to make from Apple.

Except it doesn't, because there is no esc key. There's a portion of a touch sensitive monitor that may, or may not, have an active region that simulates an esc key, which you won't know without looking at it, rather than being able to rely on the fact that there's a key in the upper left that you can feel for without ever looking at your keyboard, in the knowledge that it always sends the one key code it has to.

If this has never been a problem for you: nice! But it's been so much of a problem for everyone else, and they've spoke up about this so much, that Apple undid that decision.

Yes, there is. Show me a situation where the Touch Bar wouldn't have the ESC button there. Additionally, if the position and location are that big of an issue, there is a setting that guarantees that the ESC key and FN keys are always on the bar at all times.

There is literally nothing that the physical key does that the virtual key on the Touch Bar can't do.

Actually, that behavior is baked into the OS.

That doesn't bear any relevance to application UI frameworks that don't build on top of the OS's UI framework.

On the contrary, I'd say the ESC key is even more important to normal consumers than programmers compared to, say, the backtick key. I mostly use it for coming out of fullscreen for youtube, netflix etc and I'm sure most consumers don't even know what a backtick is.

You're probably right about the unpopularity of the backtick key, and it's too bad. I use cmd-` probably 1000 times every day. For me cmd-` and cmd-Tab completely obviate any need for Mission Control or any of the other 14 different mechanisms in MacOS that show you all your windows and let you click one with the mouse.

Same. CMD+Tab tells me everything I need to know.

My dock auto hides and I only use it to open the downloads folder.

Very rarely I can't find a window and I use a hot corner to show all windows of the space but it happens once a week at the most.

The physical key isn't what's important to consumers. The ability to back out and use the ESC function is and that's still there for everyone who has a Touch Bar machine.

I do use vi, but I think it's more important that ESC is used to non-destructively dismiss a dialog. Like exiting fullscreen mode, backing out, or dismissing a warning--but not exiting without saving.

I too love the touch bar.

For example I love that apps written to use (eg VS.Code) now have labelled buttons rather than imposing on me to remember strange function buttons.

In macOS Keyboard Settings

Remap CapsLock -> Esc

Changed my life.

As a VIM guy myself, this was huge. I never felt like I was missing out having done this.

I've only been using vim (well, neovim) for a few months, but I just assumed everyone mapped ESC to the caps lock key. Nearly every beginner tutorial recommended it, for good reason.

Even better, hyper key: https://brettterpstra.com/2017/06/15/a-hyper-key-with-karabi...

(Functions as ESC if pressed alone, otherwise acts as hyper key which is great to use for keyboard shortcuts)

I could care less about the ESC key being gone (remapped that to caps lock) but I hate the touchbar so much. Half the time i'm listening music and go to pause it the bar doesn't work, or tells me it's already paused even though music is playing.

A year or two back chrome implemented media controls for tabs that have media on them. Before I realized (and disabled) that, I thought the media keys weren't working on my 2014 MBP. That could be happening to you?

The fact that you remapped Esc to Caps Lock and don't miss the latter just indicates the non-essentiality of Caps Lock.

Guess which key Apple will remove next :)

They will put a tiny screen there to display ads for top selling apps.

Just breathed new life into my 2013 15" by replacing the thermal paste. Runs much cooler/quieter now.

I switched to using caps lock for esc and actually prefer it now.

So what do you do if you already had Caps Lock assigned to Ctrl?

CMD+. does the same as escape in most situations. Works on MacOS and iOS.

The first thing I tried to do with it, pull a window out of fullscreen, did not work :/

Apple just launched a $300 keyboard for iPad Pro, with no Esc key.

...which is perfectly reasonable for a device with an operating system with no legacy of needing one for day to day operations.

I mapped it to caps lock, but my Blink already allowed that.

As I’m working from home I’ve got back on using my MBA 2013. I’ve replaced its internal 256gb with 2TB. While I like the MBP 13” 2018 of me and it’s faster in compiling... I really enjoy it. It’s working well and most importantly when I connect usb devices I don’t need extra dongles.

They tried something, failed, now they are changing course. That is a plus in my book. I have a 2016 15" MBP and I hate the keyboard. One of the worst laptops ever made by Apple. I hope next they bring back letting user upgrade components (like let me install my own RAM and SSD upgrades.)

Next press release may read as follows:

"The new magic keyboard, not only with the new inverted T arrangement of arrow keys, but also with absolutely brand new physical function keys featuring all new haptic feedback experience."

More like their past press release; here's some text from their newish 16" MacBook Pro page (https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-16/):

The 16-inch MacBook Pro takes workflow efficiency to a new level. The new Magic Keyboard features a refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm travel for a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience. The Touch Bar puts powerful shortcuts front and center, and Touch ID provides fast authentication. A dedicated Escape key allows quick switching between modes and views. And the inverted-T arrow keys enable fluid navigation whether you’re flying through lines of code, navigating spreadsheets, or gaming.

If Apple had released computers with the touch bar above the existing physical function keys, everyone would love it and other companies would provide a similar feature, the same way that they have all converged on the same industrial design as what Apple pioneered 20 years ago.

Instead, Jony Ive insisted on the touch bar replacing the function keys, and here we are. At least the butterfly switches are finally dead.

Everyone keeps talking about vi/emacs stuff. While that was annoying, the more annoying aspect was when macOS softlocked and I was unable to hit the chord (cmd+opt+esc) to get the kill task window because the touchbar froze as well.

Having a virtual ESC key in software that can be frozen, where part of your keyboard chord to kill apps includes the ESC key is really, really, stupid and caused me lots of wasted time that could have been saved had there just been a hard ESC key.

Mapping the Caps Lock key to Esc in the modifier remap interface is how I handled this situation (and others with essential ESC). Figured that probably wasn't coincidence that they added Esc to it when the new keyboard was introduced--was as much of a nod to mitigating a bad idea as we got.

But yeah, it was stupid, especially given that software developers are a very visible market for them in the Bay Area. As soon as the 16" came out with an Esc, I ordered one at work and bought one at home so I guess they won, but it's another step towards getting me on a Linux or Windows PC a generation or two down the line.

This didn't work for those of us who map Caps Lock to Control, like god intended. IIRC, it wasn't possible to map the left Control key to ESC for some reason.

I actually use Karabiner now to do Ctrl if held, Esc if tapped. It’s a little tougher to walk people through though:

1) install karabiner elements

2) select complex modifications

3) add rule

4) import more from internet

5) import change caps lock key v4

6) add rule change caps_lock to control if pressed with other keys, to escape if pressed alone

...is my actual current setup, along with a bunch of other key mapping. But I started with what I posted above, which everyone with Mojave+ on a MBP has available already.

Is karabiner going to stop working in 10.16? Because of the kext lockdown/deprecation?

I'm very afraid of getting too used to it and then having it stop working.

https://github.com/pqrs-org/Karabiner-Elements/issues/2149

I hadn't seen that before, but figures. More and more, a nice Lenovo, Dell, or System76 laptop running Linux is starting to sound really good. Hell, it's got better gaming support than Mac now, with Vulkan.

As far as the immediate concern goes, Karabiner is such a popular thing that I suspect there'll be some way to support it. If not, I won't upgrade. I just bought this MacBook Pro, and it'll probably continue to be usable on 10.15.x for its lifetime. I'm not too interested in my gaming keyboard and 10 key pad becoming unusable, at any rate.

If they actually completely kill software support for this, I guess next best thing would be a USB intermediary to process the key codes. Possible it's doable with a Raspberry PI or something, and there are enough mechanical keyboard enthusiasts on Mac someone would be motivated to do it. Won't help for the internal keyboard though.

btw, this issue has some "system-supported" ways to do the simple modifications. That at least would let me do a workaround for some of what I'd need to replace (swapping modifier keys, mapping my ten-keypad to arrow keys, etc.)

https://github.com/pqrs-org/Karabiner-Elements/issues/2196

Karabiner also lets you disable the Touch Bar escape so you don’t accidentally trigger it.

Re left ctrl, btw, it’s possible now to map ctrl to esc. It’ll map both keys though—-the apple interface doesn’t do left/right.

It’s a “simple modification” (specific type) in Karabiner though, if you use that. I use PC mechanical keyboards so most of my typing devices a) have swapped around mod keys and b) map right ctrl to fn so I can do Mac device hotkeys from pc keyboard.

Real Vi/emac users don’t use the esc key. It’s way too far frome home row.

i am a real vi user its not too far I use esc

I think the parent was a bit tongue-in-cheek. It's in reference to the keyboard layout vi was developed with and the fact many vi users are obsessed with keeping their fingers on/near the home row (much like, "a /real/ vi user doesn't use the mouse"). Ctrl-[ is an equivalent to ESC on American English keyboards.

https://dave.cheney.net/2017/08/21/the-here-is-key

https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key#Avoiding_th...

Right! Real vi users have a foot pedal for escape.

:__)

*yes, fingers pointing at me

I think most people actually remap to the ~ key, or if they're extreme they'll use tab. On my keyboard Escape already came as the ~ key and you have to use fn to access ~ or `.

The ergonomics of moving it closer far outweigh any benefits from it being physical vs touchscreen.

Remap caps-lock to escape and you're good to go! Or remap capslock to control and use Ctrl-[. Or use karabiner and remap capslock to control-when-held and escape-when-pressed-quickly.

AutoHotkey can do this "caps lock as both escape and control" thing too. I use this, from http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Map_caps_lock_to_escape_in_Windows :

  ; Author: fwompner gmail com
  #InstallKeybdHook
  SetCapsLockState, alwaysoff
  Capslock::
  Send {LControl Down}
  KeyWait, CapsLock
  Send {LControl Up}
  if ( A_PriorKey = "CapsLock" )
  {
      Send {Esc}
  }
  return

When I first started using Emacs, I used to joke that with all the various modifiers and prefix keys for escapes that it was just a generation away from needing foot pedals.

Or they use ctrl+c

Right. I've been a long time vim user and I don't really use the escape key while vim-ing. I use ctrl+c.

don't you mean toe pedal?

Some of us just have big hands. :3

Mapping the sequence 'jk' to Esc supercharged vim for me. Faster, but also helps me stay in the flow longer.

Run `:inoremap jk <Esc>` to try it out.

I wonder if any people remap hjkl to jkl;. Having to shift my hands one key over always annoyed me.

I just use my index finger for both j and h. Are you used to the arrow keys? I noticed with jkl;, my fingers line up with the arrow-key directions.

'jk' are on the strongest two fingers on the right hand home row, since that's what you'll be doing the most. 'h' can be hit once or twice with no real effort, but there are better ways to move left and right within a line, such as `bBeEfFwWIA`. I also remap `H` and 'L' to move all the way to either end of the line, but I might be doing it wrong

add in kj too and you can just press both keys at the same time and it will work like it was just one key press. the added benefit is that it's basically a no-op from the standpoint of vim too just in case you were already in normal mode.

On the keyboards vi was designed for, Escape was positioned where the Caps Lock key is now on modern US-101 keyboards. May as well just map it there.

I'm puzzled by this claim.

The keyboard for the ADM-3A shows a Ctrl key to the left of A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A#Hardware

The VT100 shows CAPS LOCK to the left of A. https://vt100.net/docs/vt100-ug/chapter1.html#S1.1

So on which visual terminal was ESC to the left of A? Or are you perhaps referring to ex, an antecedent of vi, which was designed for hardcopy terminals? If so, which hardcopy terminal had ESC to the left of A? I've looked at the images for some and can't find that.

You’re right. Next to Q is correct, still more reachable than it is now. Now Tab is in that position and we’re used to that.

This happened to me last week.

I did not notice at first, but I could not reduce the volume, since its control was gone.

Then I tried to restart finder, but the escape key was ‘gone’.

I have an even better story about the one that replaced this (same model).

The "real" Escape key is essential. I'm using a new 16" MBP at work and it's quite nice, but without the real Escape key I'd probably be cursing the computer every day. I thought I'd hate the touchbar, but I actually thought it was cute -- for about an hour. Then I realized it was just a useless gimmick and reset it to "Expanded Control Strip" which is Apple's euphemism for "Make the touchbar look and act just like the old Mac function keys."

I did add the "Do Not Disturb" key to the touchbar; it's nice to have one-button access to that function when I need to get work done without distractions.

The touchbar is for sure a gimmick, but I found some use for it in PyCharm. There’s a lot of commands you can run from the menubar in pycharm so its kinda useful to skip a complicated hotkey and just add it to the touchbar. Maybe in video editing programs theres some use?

I imagine it might be more useful for content creation than others. Then again, maybe not.

I was forced to remove several buttons from the touch bar, because when I go to type numbers I will occasionally brush the bar with my fingertips, interrupting my workflow as something random suddenly pops up.

I hate the Touch Bar.

I got my first touchbar enabled MacBook this month after holding out as long as I could and I find I accidentally hit it all the time when browsing the web.

The last time this came up on HN (that I read) someone recommended Pock, so I'll pass on that recommendation.

https://pock.dev

This takes the touchbar from 'annoying' to 'ok this is kind of useful actually', for me at least. I spend a lot of time on a keyboard + trackball combo, but keep my laptop propped a bit for TouchID, zooming, and one or two other useful idioms.

I've been hiding the Dock for a solid decade, and it's a more useful default than, say, the illegible window snapshots Safari insists on offering over the obvious choice of favicon + a few letters of the title.

It's baffling to me that none of Chrome, Firefox, nor Safari, offer that interface for the touchbar on Mac.

Thank you for this post. This seems incredibly useful for casual settings when you're on another computer and you want to pull up another app.

I tried out pock.dev a while ago, but didn't really find it useful. I just rarely use my dock, it's been hidden for years. I open almost everything with spotlight (Or Alfred a few years ago), and switching is just cmd + tab.

I do find the Touch Bar useful for music controls and scrubbing through a video, but that's about it.

> I did add the "Do Not Disturb" key to the touchbar; it's nice to have one-button access

Not quite one button, but option- clicking the notifications icon at the far right of the menu bar will also enable do not disturb

Learned that after I installed the button on the touchbar but yeah, good point.

I have the 2016 MBP, and the digital escape key makes me angry almost every single day, there's just no feedback whatsoever. And every so often I accidentally "press" it. Other than that, the only useful feature is music controls.

The touchbar is not useless - that is an opinion I do not share.

I do not use the Fn keys in MacOS - and having media controls, screen lock, and other data in the touchbar makes more sense for me. It was and is an experiment in user behavior and UI. Some like it, some don't. I'm not committed to it, but I don't want the HN bubble to think their "bad touchbar" is the only opinion.

I can see it can be, and it actually is useful for many users, but it's not for me, and many others share the same opinion. So having an option not to get the touch bar is important for us.

I hear you, but that gets to the core of Apple design: They don't have a million options for people.

Some want headphone jack, many don't. Some like the butterfly keys, many don't. Touchbar, USB-A, Magsafe, Touch ID, small OLED form factor... they pick a side and go.

As a fellow vim user, I don't get the esc key problem. <C-[> is the same thing and a lot less movement. Esc is too far away where as <C-[> is already where my hands naturally lie and similar to other patterns I use (<C-x><C-p>, <C-x><C-l>, etc). I seriously do not understand the whole obsession with the esc key. If you have to lift your wrists you're doing it wrong.

One might be using a keyboard layout in which some special characters are cumbersome to type. I am switching between 3 layouts regularly and "[" and "|" are only fun on QWERTY, on AZERTY or QWERTZ they are painful.

That would be painful. But I hear these comments from a lot of Americans. QWERTY is also pretty common in Europe in general, so I don't think the frequency of the comments (aligned with the quality of English) lines up.

I have the same laptop. It was the first Retina model Apple released in 2012 and it held up great for a long time. Last year, it started to have random kernel panics. Seems that was a factory defect and Apple used to fix it for free, but now it's "vintage" so they won't do it anymore. I can't believe it has a HDMI port and a SD card slot. Don't think those are ever coming back to Macbooks.

Why would you use Esc that puts your fingers away from your home position?

Use CTRL-C or map something like "jj".

Built into MacOS itself is the ability to do something many vi and emacs users do regardless of the presence of a touchbar:

Remap caps lock (a useless key anyway) to escape.

This is in System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys > pick 'Escape' from the dropdown next to 'Caps lock key'.

If you wanna get fancy you can rewire right-ctrl or whatnot to esc too if you like that.

There are also 3rd party utilities like [Karabiner](https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/) which is undoubtedly the front runner for mac remappers (And public domain to boot). It's very scriptable; for example, if you want, you can set it up such that a longer press on caps lock really is caps lock (making use of the led for visual feedback that you engaged caps lock), but a short tap is escape. This does mean the ESC cannot register until you release.

If only there was some software to make this keyboard not sound like a slap fight between 2 otters...

MY 6 month old mac is loosing the ink off the letters, at this point I can barely read "A". My 2015 model they keyboard is still in perfect shape. ALSO one of the things I hate about this new keyboard is its SUPER noisy on voice calls.

> Yes I'm a vi user.

Have you tried using crtl-[? As a side benefit, it's less of a stretch on the little finger, and it ought to work across most vi setups.

I remapped the key on the upper left, where ESC should be, to ESC. Well, it's now to the left of the number row, but I've used keyboards where it was in that place. So muscle memory works fine for that.

The keys that are there (caret and circle) get some other place, which works fine for me, because I am used to having those somewhere else in the first place.

As soon as the escape key has been removed, I had to do a big switch. Use the caps lock key as escape key. Happy since then! The only hassle is to go set it up in the keyboard prefs.

I was initially waiting for this new 13", because I was finally needing a MacBook. I got tired of waiting and, as these things usually happened, bought an upgraded and battery-replaced 2015 13" MBP a week ago with 16GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD for a grand. Do you know what that RAM and storage space costs on the new 13" model? More than double that. I'm pretty okay with my decision.

The 2015 13' MBP's are still the best balance of form and function. You made a great choice.

I was curious how the 13 inch was priced so I compared it to a new Dell XPS 13. Dell has a better processor (maybe, [2]) , but I couldn't find the option to upgrade the Dell to 4TB internal SSD, so I compared both with the 2 TB option. Ram is the same at 32GB.

Dell came out to $2399[0] USD and Apple came out to $2999[1] USD.

Dell Pros:

* Row of function buttons (I've used BTT to customize my touch-bar to the point where it's a little bit of a tossup, but years of muscle memory still haunt me)

* Better processor (maybe [2])

* Cheaper

* MicroSD reader

Apple Pros:

* Better Trackpad

* More Ports (Upgraded Dell only has 2 USB-C, while Upgraded MBP has 4)

* Better hardware support

* Better resale value

Objectively, seems to me that list used to be a lot longer on the Apple side. IMHO I think the Touch Bar disappointment is probably over dramatized by developers, it's not too bad a couple years in and BTT has made it so I can run whatever macros I want in any application, so overall tossup in my mind. I still miss mag-safe adapters though. I still don't understand that decision.

Also, I'm happy with the new Magic Keyboard. I have the 16 inch MBP right now, and I will say that even though I prefer the travel of the '12-'15 era keyboards, this typing experience is far superior than the faulty butterfly keys.

I'm hoping given how they've walked the keyboard back, and how the new Mac Pro is actually a Pro machine that they're headed back in the right direction (post Jony Ive). A $600 price difference for this machine is probably worth it in my mind, just given my experience with resale value, longevity and lack of competitors, but there's a lot of room improvement.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/p6RA9HF

[1] https://imgur.com/a/f6ii7h9

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23067768

I think "better processor" can only fall into the Dell camp if it's confirmed that they're running it at a 25W TDP all-the-time and not the default 15W, or else Apple's chip choices will likely win because they can consume more power (but I don't know the actual model #s Apple is using).

Yeah, that's the stupid part about tech specs honestly--so many hidden caveats--I always thought it was interesting that Apple benchmarks usually outperform competitors when comparing similar hardware, usually to things like this.

Mostly annoyed now, because you are correct, it's running at 15W[0][1].

[0] https://imgur.com/a/ry5eAIy

[1] source for [0] (pg 11) https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/xps-13-7390-2-in-1-laptop_se...

I've moved to a 16" as well, the touchbar is fine IMO. The biggest issue before this update was just removing the escape key. I've mostly adjusted to switching caps lock to escape now because of it.

My biggest disappointment in this 13" upgrade is that it is still 13 inch. The display quality has increased over the years, but resolution/size has stayed the same since 2012.

That and the continued use of the same 720P webcam. Hopefully we get a FaceID enabled mac in 2021 where they put in a decent camera.

Yeah I noticed this too. In PC land, most ultrabooks have thinner bezels so this form factor would either have a 14” display or it would have a 13” display in the same footprint as the old 12” MacBook.

My $800 13” HP Envy for example only has about 2mm of bezels on its 4k display.

Apple is falling behind here which is strange considering how much they fetishize thinness.

Nice comparison but from personal experience I'd count the 'Killer' WiFi/BT as a giant negative on the XPS. I've had no shortage of issues with it on Linux and Windows.

That's really interesting. I've had a Killer wifi module in a Razer Blade Stealth running Debian 10 for about a year and I have never had any issues at all.

Bluetooth may have hit the right spot for demand but whoever came up with the spec wasn't smart enough to get it below thousands of pages for its spec and now every manufacturer has random quality of Bluetooth drivers. Bluetooth needs s replacement but it's kind of too late.

I'm curious if they still have the high CPU issues when charging the device on the left.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22957573

[2]: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/363337/how-to-find...

I recently switched from an Air to an XPS 15 9570. I was very excited, it seemed to have all the best qualities of a MacBook, minus the shotty keyboard, and superior performance per dollar (at the time).

Things went downhill rather quickly. I've had massive cooling issues, I've removed and replaced the thermal paste. I've been forced to operate the laptop on the "Cool" thermal setting; downgrading the performance of the processor. Now, the two of the screws in palm rest, which hold the screen in place, have sheered right off. Doing some digging, this was commonplace with this particular model.

I'm not doing anything particularly intense either. Docker with a few containers running a dev website.

I can't speak for the latest XPS 15 7590 build quality however.

I will never buy a dell again, had an XPS 9550 (£2.7k 32gb ram, top of the range) - they had a chip in to detect a valid dell power adapter and that went so they wanted over 600 to replace the motherboard.

I bought a macbook and use the dell charger (udb-c) to charge my macbook.

My step-daughter spilled water on her MBA. It would no longer charge. It would run connected to AC, and the battery health was fine, but the "charging circuit" needed replaced, according to diagnostics.

Okay, I thought. $200, maybe $300, including parts and labor.

Not quite. They wanted $879. "Maybe we should look at getting you into a new Macbook instead?"

No thanks. It was almost never used unplugged anyway.

Sounds like they needed to replace the whole motherboard.

My 9370 is definitely just plain USB-PD, doesnt require a Dell charger. I can charge it with a inexpensive Anker charger.

600 is pricey for a mainboard replacement, but none of the other vendors are much better, including Apple. I previously had a Thinkpad that died shortly out of warranty, and they actually wanted more to fix it than I paid for it new.

I've had nothing but problems with 9570. Constantly overheating. It's a good day when I can get even 3 hours of battery life.

that was my experience as well before returning xps and getting a new macbook.

on any intensive work it would get so hot that i could not rest my hands on it.

I had an old XPS13, and eagerly ordered the XPS15 9570 fully loaded the moment it was available in the UK.

What followed was a year of fan noise, thermal throttling, GPU switching problems and many hours lost trying to get the right combination of Ubutunu + Nvida drivers working.

So when my house was burgled and that machine got stolen, I went back to the XPS13 form factor. Smaller, lighter, longer battery life, quieter. Only disadvantage being the max of 16GB RAM.

Once the XPS13 finally arrives with 32GB RAM I may well upgrade again.

The new MacBook Pro may tempt me, but I am certainly not giving up proper function keys.

I have a 9570 as well. I ordered the bare minimum memory and storage so I could swap in my own 16GB of RAM and 1 TB SSD. I also applied thermal pads to the VRMs and (less importantly) heatpipes so they conduct to the chassis. Lastly, I undervolted the CPU with Intel XTU. I have had no throttling issues and it has been a steadfast partner. I've never had a laptop I liked more. It took some upfront work, and that's not everyone's bag, but I honestly could not find a decent laptop that met my specs for under $3000. This one did it for $1600.

> it seemed to have all the best qualities of a MacBook

Except MacOS.

I've had a company-issued XPS 9570 for the last year, and overall I haven't had any big issues.

Cooling is sub-par, but I think that's mostly due to the Intel i9-8950HK running way over the advertised TDP during Turbo. Dell has been tweaking their cooling profile in subsequent BIOS updates, at with the latest version (1.15) they're quite aggressive on ramping up the fans to keep things cool. Which is good from a performance perspective, but really annoying to sit beside all day. While I didn't experience severe thermal throttling, I did end up disabling Turbo as it made the laptop sound like a jet engine too often for my taste.

My only other complaint would be that despite Dell's claims of 100W+ power delivery from their ThunderBolt dock (above and beyond what USB-C PD can deliver), I frequently find the laptop discharging the battery under moderate load (high CPU, idle dGPU) when connected via USB-C to the dock. Using the supplied DC charger solves this, but it's still a poor user experience.

At my previous employer I had a 2017 MBP. IMHO an XPS/Precision is a better option as you can (in no particular order): upgrade the RAM, upgrade the SSD, run Linux on it, and (until the new MBP release) had a much better keyboard experience.

As others have noted, Dell's enterprise warranty support is fantastic. I was able to invoke the warranty to replace a motherboard in a Latitude I bought used on eBay; they sent a technician to my house to replace it free of charge.

From what I can see, Dell has significant problems with quality control. That's why the feedback is so varied.

If you live in a city with good Dell support, you could probably have managed to replace it. Sounds like a hardware problem.

I had similar experience with 9360. The notebook freezes under heavy load and I have to restart (it happens once a day when working on rather large Android project). The webcam on the bottom left of the screen is a bad joke (I think they moved it elsewhere later?).

> and how the new Mac Pro is actually a Pro machine that they're headed back in the right direction (post Jony Ive).

Hardly, considering the lack of professional tools support outside Hollywood movie makers.

"Hollywood movie makers" and specifically VFX artists have long moved to linux/windows workstations as the performance on mac side has stagnated until the recent release of the Mac Pro but it was too little too late.

Writers and sound engineers are still firmly in the Mac camp though due to their tools being mac exclusives.

The Apple list is shorter because you ignored nearly all of the differentiating features enabled by the Apple ecosystem. You also ignored many of the non-obvious details of the Mac hardware.

Depends on use cases. We switch between the xps-13 and starting now this at work.

We use 0 apple specific apps. We write python and Vue.js using pycharm.

So from a business use case, do you want windows, Linux, or Mac hot keys? Python and everything runs everywhere.

(Biggest problem is Windows Home doesn’t run Docker as well, but it can be worked around)

I did a similar comparison a few years ago and had a very similar list and came to the same conclusion (about $500 more for the Apple, but it was probably worth it in known reliability and resale). The only thing I would have added was that Apple's camera quality hasn't improved in 10+ years, which sucks if you're working remote (hopefully now everyone notices this).

A lot of the hardware things I liked about Mac laptops got stripped off (MagSafe, charging indicator, SD card slot).

I imagine everything else is up to personal workflow. My wife was looking at another Mac laptop because she wanted to transition GarageBand projects from her iPad. Since, in practice, the files often crash when doing this and she has to export/import that workflow is useless and she's looking at a Windows laptop.

I'd be curious what kind of things you would put on your list.

I’ll not that I use windows, Mac, and Linux (arch and Ubuntu) all equally effectively. In no particular order, here are some things about macs that are often missed:

FaceTime, iPhone, sms/iMessage integration that works even when phone is not nearby.

T2 chip/Secure Enclave.

Easier to use full disk encryption.

Note’s built in capability to encrypt specific notes with a private, unrecoverable password.

Faster system software updates.

Most apps shipping as DMG rather than installer packages, which allows me to install them without granting admin rights.

Family members who have macs ask me for help far less than those with windows.

The trackpad is vastly superior. I actually prefer thinkpad-style trackpoints, but thinkpads aren’t what they used to be. The Mac trackpad feels good to touch, the taptic full-pad pseudo-clicking is superior to physical button presses, and the multi-pressure level support is occasionally useful. The gestures work well and feel natural.

Find my Mac/iPod/iPhone is implemented in a privacy preserving method. It’s also super useful to be able to simply say to my laptop “hey Siri, where is my phone?” to have it trigger the audio beacon.

The speakers on the new 16” MBP are excellent. I use my headphones much less now.

I love the look of Macbook monitors more than most pc laptop monitors. Of course, some pc laptops have comparable or exactly the same panel, but the price goes up pretty fast.

Photos is an imperfect replacement for Picasa (RIP). However it has some features my family loves, like automatically figuring out groups of related events and generating movies from photos of family trips, then surprising me with a phone notification.

Many of the built in apps feature end-to-end encryption.

I feel like windows 10 is always spying on me. I have to spend hours configuring a fresh windows install to turn off all the garbage. Not signing into a Microsoft account with windows 10 causes all kinds of limitations, like not being able use fingerprint readers.

The microphone array on the new MBP works very well such a shame it wasn’t paired with a better camera.

Access to a terminal. I spend most of my time in vim. WSL just isn’t comparable (yet) in terms of integration and ease of use.

There are also things that are much worse about macs, but that aren’t dealbreakers for me:

Horrible software quality, going back decades, in ways that really matter. The only times I’ve ever lost data due to software is when OSX corrupted a drive. Backups are vital, and they must be stored on non-Apple devices/services. This is a hidden cost no one ever talks about, even though the internet is rife with Mac/time machine data loss anecdotes.

Extremely uncomfortable sharp edges.

Safari is so close to being useful, but falls short. I configure it to wipe out everything on close, and use it as a sort of super-private-mode browser.

QuickTime is garbage.

Application file associations are super finicky.

There is no built in method to set the screen to native resolution, needlessly inflicting blurry screens.

Apple might blow it again with the hardware for years, meaning no upgrade path.

The machines are under-ventilated, under-powered, under-rammed.

Lack of games support.

Horrible battery life if you do anything intensive. Factorio burns through a full battery in about 90 minutes.

I wish they would make a “kids edition” laptop that is cheaper, made of plastic for dent-resistance, and can be locked down in the same way as iOS.

I wish it had a built in hyper visor or allowed me to run apps in something like sandboxie.

I wish I could change the the window manager (I happily used Arch for years and fell in love with the tiling window manager spectrwm).

The lack of a 4K screen on the MBP makes me sad. I had a thinkpad p1 with a 4K screen and it was stunning (but a power hog).

I have an older XPS 13 with a glass screen (same design but previous generation) and one big annoyance is that every time you open the laptop, the screen will have grease marks across the centre where the keys have touched the glass while closed.

FWIW, this has been a problem on all the laptops I've ever owned, including 4 different MacBooks built between 2011-2019, and a Chromebook Pixel.

And eventually the marks don't wipe off, they remove whatever coating is on the screen. I've had this happen on pretty much every MBP I've ever owned.

I've had this happen once, and the Apple store replaced the screen no questions asked. I usually use a microfibre cloth between the screen and the keyboard though. It's a problem with all (modern) laptops from what I can tell - my Thinkpad T480s suffers from it, though my X220 does not.

Get a sheet of microfiber cloth, cut it to your screen size, and place it over the keyboard/trackpad before closing your laptop.

Sure, or wiping it off before use with my shirt works as well! It's still a bit annoying

If you’re into that kind of thing, RadTech makes microfleece screen protectors and sleeves that are already sized appropriately for various Apple products.

https://www.radtech.com/products/screensavrz-macbook-pro-key...

I cannot agree more. At least for myself i would add MacOS as a huge plus over any other laptop. I know many people work in Linux but I just for the life of me cannot make it as comfortable as MacOS.

The integration with iOS/iMessages/keychain/homekit /FaceTime is extremely convenient for me. I don't mind paying extra for it, and I like that they have stores near me.

I would definitely agree with that. Having bought into the Apple ecosystem brings software features that you can't get elsewhere.

I really like Linux, but switched to macOS years ago because the quality of most Linux software outside of the GNU ecosystem is very unpredictable and commonly faulty. Companies seem to hate supporting Linux, and I've had enough distro updates break my OS in the past that eventually I just got beaten down. MacOS gives me a Unix shell, a consistent UI, and I've never had a system update lead to a black screen, or a new UI that I hate, or half my installed software being broken. Let's not even get started on the support for most Linux distros. Even Ubuntu has what I would consider to be dreadful support, unless maybe you're a corporate client of theirs.

Linux is good if you can configure it for a very specific purpose, like a server, or a graphics workstation, or even web development. For general purpose, its warts grow the more you use it. Hopefully someone has a dangerous looking Bash one-liner that will solve all your problems.

The thing I dont understand about OSX is the Finder situation. It's just awful. Installation is awful, finding applications is awful, navigating to the system folders is awful.

It's very much like Windows and it's pretending Desktop is the root folder and then hiding everything behind databases of My Documents.

Dont make me jump through hoops to find computery stuff.

> Dont make me jump through hoops to find computery stuff.

I'm curious what "computery" stuff you're looking for? If you're trying to modify stuff a "normal user" wouldn't touch, you'd be better off on the command line. Finder isn't meant for people who want to muck around with the system because everyday normal users shouldn't be messing with system files.

Personally I hardly ever use Finder. Cmd+Space to launch apps and then I use those apps to manage their document types. I develop using VSCode and I'm on iTerm I'd say 75% time anyways.

I don't get why power users shouldn't be afforded the power of graphical file management. The command line is not an adequate substitute for quickly navigating and managing the filesystem to me.

For managing files, the commandline is strictly more efficient than GUI if you ask me.

For navigating: try ranger.

https://github.com/ranger/ranger

Maybe I'm not a "power user," but I'm using the Finder for graphical file management roughly every day and it's just not a super big issue for me.

These "Macs aren't for power users" threads always kind of fascinate me, because it's so clear how differently people define "power user," and at times it feels like a lot of people define it as "this system has defaults that I don't like" or, even more often around here, "If I ever feel like I have to touch my mouse the system is crap." Whereas for me, I want a launcher/workflow runner like Alfred, which very often is my "command line" for a lot of functionality. I can assign a keyboard shortcut to anything in any menu in any application at the system level. I can wrap Unix scripts in Automator actions and put them in the Service context menu, so I can highlight text in any application and run it through a filter with a single click. I drag the proxy document icon in the title bar of windows to perform actions on that file all the time. To me, these are totally "power user" things, while I've never once thought "man, if only I had a mouse-free tiling 'window' manager that just split the screen in multiple sections with no overlapping windows I would be so much more productive."

Also, I'm typing this on a 2020 Macbook Air and it has a terrific keyboard. With the release of this 13" MacBook Pro, AFAIK this eliminates the butterfly keyswitch from their lineup.

I agree, and I think both options should always be available. to the user.

Shift-cmd-g, and you can put in any path you like, with autocomplete.

I live in the terminal and just `open .` when I need Finder for some reason (very rare for dev purposes).

I've actually found `open` to be the most indispensable thing on MacOs. The Linux versions don't cut it (`xbg-open` or something?) it opens applications in the foreground of the shell process so it takes over the terminal you were working in, so you have to write aliases to background the process.

You can write a script for that, something like `xdg-open $1 & disown` will cut it already. However managing the default applications on Linux is a ridiculous pain in the ass.

> Dont make me jump through hoops to find computery stuff.

Just press cmd+shift+period in the Finder to unhide all the hidden files and directories.

You can also write `open /path/to/somewhere` from any location in your terminal window to open the Finder at that spot.

Seems really simple to open "Macintosh HD" in the Finder and find all the "computer-y stuff" I could want. I also added my homedir to the "favorites" list. There's also the very handy cmd-shift-g shortcut for "Go to folder" that autocompletes paths on tab (also under the Go menu which has a bunch of handy links, including Home, Computer, etc.).

I usually navigate directories from the command line. If I want to do something that needs Finder (like drag and drop a file) I run an "open ." to pop a Finder window with the current directory.

I would agree finder when compared to File explorer (and its Linux equivalent) or even file manger in windows 3.1 is the Mac OS's biggest weakness.

CMD+up and you in `computery stuff`. Don't understand the problem

Yeah, I'm sorry but the idea of dealing with linux compatibility on a laptop or running Windows is a complete dealbreaker for me. despite how bad the macbook pros get i just can't switch.

Good thing the Dell XPS developer edition ships with Linux already set up.

I switched from Mac to Linux a few years back, haven't regretted it for a second (well, there were a few seconds in there that were touch-and-go).

I now run a tiling window manager (i3wm) on a Debian distro (PureOS, came with the laptop) and I'm enjoying it immensely.

I still use an external Apple keyboard (a magic keyboard from 2015 - y'know, when they were good hehe). The trackpad has never been quite up to the Mac's standard, so I use an external mouse too. But I was using an external keyboard and mouse even on the MBP, so no change there (just the option to switch to trackpad isn't as awesome).

Which laptop or desktop hardware are you using for your Linux setup.

After the Mac I bought a Dell XPS 15, which ran Linux fine but I had issues with the dual-boot and GRUB setup - I could probably have fixed them, but meh.

I then bought a Purism 13, which has been awesome (apart from a niggling problem with the space bar). Having a laptop designed from the ground up to be open, maintainable, and running Linux is an amazing experience. I had a problem with the screen on this one and tech support said "open up the back of the case and have a look to see if anything looks odd". I had more or less the exact same issue with the MBP and had to do without my laptop for a week while they replaced the screen.

I would add form factor in the comparison. Dell XPS 13 is smaller.

> I still miss mag-safe adapters though. I still don't understand that decision.

As someone who’s never had a tripping accident with a magsafe charger but has had to replace multiple damaged chargers despite being careful, I welcome that change. Spending 90€ because Apple doesn’t know how (or doesn’t care) to make cables with a modicum of durability isn’t fun. With USB-C, presumably (I don’t own one of these) I could get better cables or replace them cheaper if they got frayed.

I was also excited for the possibility of being able to charge on either side, until I learned that comes at a cost: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/363337/how-to-find...

Replacing the cable is a lot easier than replacing a damaged port.

I don't have enough experience with USB-C devices to know but micro USB ports ended up being too fragile if you have toddlers.

> Replacing the cable is a lot easier than replacing a damaged port.

If you’ve ever had an accident with it, which I never had.

I don’t doubt that removing magsafe is a loss in the aggregate; I’ve only mentioned the alternative is likely to be better for me.

A better option still would be if they made durable magsafe cables. But they don’t, so here we are.

It's one of those things that doesn't matter to you, until it really really does. You only need one accident to make it completely worth it

If that's something you're worried about, there are USB-C magnet attachments you can buy. If it's something you don't worry about, now you have way more options for chargers and cables.

I can't find a source for this right now, but IIRC USB-C was designed such that the cable was always the weak point, so in cases of extreme stress the cable will break before the port does.

Yeah as someone who used MagSafe for probably a decade and then switched to a USB-C MBP (now counting 3 years), I much prefer USB-C. And I'm a really clumsy person, and have two small children running around.

I probably went through one Apple MagSafe charger a year. One of them I literally only used on my desk, and the cable fell apart in 6 months, the Apple Store guy accused me of all kinds of abuse to avoid replacing it under warranty. Even with crappy amazon marketplace noname Chinese 90W USB-C cables, I've been totally fine for 3 years now.

With USB-C you can get cheaper third party chargers with all kinds of options (including full-featured Thunderbolt docks), you can use literally any old USB power bank, you can just switch out the cable when it wears out or gets chewed on, charge on the right side of the computer [the latter also really helps with the yanking risk].

As a long time PC user I'd say the Razer Blade series of laptops are far closer to Macbook replacements than Dell's machines. Plus you get a nice discrete GPU to boot. I've been using my 15" blade for several years now - and they are even better now.

As a long-time Apple user who switched to Windows/Linux after Apple decided to ditch discrete GPUs and open standards for graphics, 100% this. Razer Blades are the spiritual successors to the pre-unibody Macbooks.

That said, I've had terrible luck with Razer batteries, and their only warranty replacement option involves a multi-week turnaround. It's a good thing I'm pretty handy and replacements can be had on the usual sources.

My friend had a Blade back in 2017 -- had to replace the charger 5 (!) times until he downgraded to a chromebook.

After several years I can unequivocally say I still hate the touch bar. I love touch ID, but the bar needs to go.

USB-C was all about standardizing. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, I did love magsafe, but I also love that in theory someday I'll have one cable to rule them all. And I'll be able to charge my headphones/laptop/phone/random device with a usb-c cable instead of needing 8 of them.

The best way I can sell Thunderbolt 3/USB-C to myself is that at Apple's size, they need to be able to sell (to consumers, courts, governments) that they aren't being anti-competitive, so by switching to designs that are open and standardized (Thunderbolt 3 is a spec, not a patent) they can better sell their market dominance as not driven by patents and lawyers.

I personally wish Apple would make something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Magnetic-Adapter-Connector-Quick-Char...

Before any of you see that and go "awesome, exactly what I was looking for!" - I've had several coworkers try various models of those adapters and all have told me they universally suck. Don't waste your money.

I trust Apple could do it with quality - frankly I'd be willing to spend $50+ for a reliable version of that.

I've got another trick to use in place of a Magsafe type cable. Get a cable that is a few feet longer than you need, and attach a couple magnets a few feet apart on the cable. Then click the magnets together. Now you have a cable with a loop that is held closed by the magnets. If someone trips over the cable, the magnets come apart and pull out slack from that loop, instead of pulling the cord on the back of the laptop.

Not quite as good as having the cord detach, but it still helps in the majority of minor trip-induced cord pulls (depending on how much clack in the cable you leave bundled between the two magnets).

Are you selling this on Instagram? I just got an ad in my feed for a product that does that

No, I was thinking of designing and 3D-printing a magnet holder clip -- didn't realize someone else thought of it too. I guess what they say is true, there is no unique new ideas.

Is what you saw just a couple clip on magnets (like what I was thinking), or is it a two-piece cord held together by magnets (like the previous comment mentioned)? That would be cool if someone already makes this as a product.

The product was a full integrated cable. I won't buy it for that reason as I would 1) like to retrofit my existing cables and 2) be able to choose the cable for the spec of the cable itself. If you made a clip and magnet for retrofitting on existing cables I would buy it if it was offered for a reasonable price.

I purchased that. It doesn't suck. Though, I bet Apple could do better if it were integrated.

Anecdotally, I’ve been using one of these (different brand but looks exactly the same) with zero issues between a Thinkpad X1 and a USB-C hub. It’s extremely convenient to be able to attach everything (PD, HDMI, USB) from a single cable that’s literally touchless. The magnet and positioning allows it to automatically connect when I set the laptop on my desk, and to use the laptop elsewhere I just pick it up and carry it away. Much better than a floppy MagSafe that only does power.

If you look into those magnetic things a little bit you'll notice they don't support full thunderbolt data rates. It’s largely physics that’s holding us up, not necessarily Apple. In theory data rates don’t matter strictly for charging but then we’d be back at a different cable/port for charging vs data transfer which would be subpar UX. If nothing else I think it’s why you only see these things aftermarket. I do share your sentiment, though.

I've been using that exact adapter for several months now and I'm pretty happy with it. Carries power and data for my home setup + I have a separate one just for power for my mobile setup. What were your coworkers' complaints about it?

It seems to depend on what you use them for.

In my experience, they're good for power. Driving a 2.5k monitor over DisplayPort works reasonably well if the computer is on a solid surface (not your lap).

But they don't work well for 4k video (especially with a direct HDMI adapter) or USB 3.0 data.

"Market dominance" might overstate the case.

Apple makes up for a small percentage of all laptops sold, even if you compare manufacturers (rather than "Apple" vs "Windows machine"). They have a smaller share of laptop sales than HP, Dell, or Lenovo, and very close to the same (depending on when you look) as Acer and ASUS:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/818439/global-notebook-c...

The day has come. Last year or so ;)

Macbook, Ipad Pro, Cheap phone (Moto G / Pixel 3A) everything on my desk shares just one power brick.

There are unfortunately some devices that are nominally USB C but don't actually support the spec properly, like the Nintendo Switch. So some caution is required still.

I thought more recent Switch firmware updates had closed that gap. Could be wrong.. I don't really remember where I read it.

The Switch may or may not freak out in the face of arbitrary USB-C chargers; but it's always supported Apple's USB-C chargers just fine. (I get the sense that Nintendo developed the console by relying on Apple USB-C chargers, until they made their own.)

Doesn't work on the dock though.

I travel a lot with my Macbook + Switch and I only ever bring my Macbook's USB-C charger. It works fine with the Switch dock.

I'm charging my Switch with random cables just fine? I've heard that the issue was only with third party docks, not with USB-C cables.

In what was does the Nintendo Switch break the standard?

https://old.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/87vmud/the_... (the Google+ links won't work anymore, of course).

And yet you still can't charge an iPhone with USB-C.

I'm REALLY hoping this was the last major revision of iPhone (and airpods) to retain lightning. I won't hold my breath but I hope they finally make the move to usb-c.

Consolidate on something, at least. Here are the connectors to devices purchased from Apple in the past 12 months:

Beats Studio headphones: micro-USB (for serious, Apple?)

Beats Powerbeats Pro: Lightning

iPad Pro: USB-C

iPhone XS (a little more than 12 months ago): Lightning

See a pattern there? Yeah, me neither. I might as well have purchased them from separate vendors. And Lightning at this point isn't even a standard within Apple, it's just some jackass proprietary shit you have to buy special cables for.

So now that I'm mostly working from home, I bought a Thunderbolt monitor, and the setup is actually pretty awesome. The montior has both USB-C and USB-A inputs. I've got a physical network cable plugged and my USB-A mechanical keyboard plugged into the monitor; and of course the monitor also acts as a charger for the laptop.

Boom -- instant docking station: Plugging in a single standard cable gives me power, ethernet, monitor, and external keyboard.

Obviously you have to carry around a USB-C adapter when actually traveling, but if you get a good all-in-one adapter that does ethernet, HDMI, and USB-A, I haven't found it too disruptive. Hopefully the USB-C form factor will take over and then stay as long as USB-A has.

Which monitor?

There were two I was looking at with the same LCD component, but just different configuration of controls & placement of external USB. The one I ended up going with was LG32UL950 because I found a place that had a $150 discount; now forgotten the other brand/model. The screen is so huge I've had to spend some time figuring out how to use the space effectively, but overall I'm pretty happy.

Interesting, I don't see an ethernet port. Do you use a USB adapter?

Er, yes -- I had written that it was a USB ethernet dongle plugged into the monitor, but I seem to have edited that out.

I've used the Dell U3219Q for over a year for this purpose. Importantly, the monitor provides 90W of power, which is needed for the larger laptops, especially when running power intensive tasks. Most USB-C monitors do not provide enough power.

"After several years I can unequivocally say I still hate the touch bar. "

With BetterTouch Tool I have set it up so it's halfway usable. Still worse than the old function buttons though.

what are the adjustments you made with bettertouchtool?

I have volume and display brightness buttons, also a mute button and play/pause. They are permanent and don’t switch with the application. Pretty much like it was before the Touchbar....

I tried to use the Touchbar for a while without customization but I never could get the hang of it. It just seems useless.

Is that different from System Preferences > Keyboard > Touch Bar shows Expanded Control Strip?

You have more options. But it has been a while since I set this up so I don’t remember exactly.

I HATE the touch bar.

I simply H A T E it.

I hate it so much that I started to carry an TKL keyboard all the time with me just to avoid using this piece of sh*t touch bar and internal keyboard (MBP 2017).

As a developer it is crucial that I can use my keyboard without any looks but as there is no way to tell which function key you press on the touch bar the bar itself is completely useless for me.

Beside the butterfly switches one of the worst things Apple has ever introduced to their computers.

I just purged Apple from my life largely because the touchbar continues to live on. Love my new Lenovo, btw.

As a workaround for the touchbar that worked pretty well, I bought a silicon keyboard protector for the Apple Magic Keyboard, cut out the area for the function keys, and used hot glue to glue it over the touch bar.

Prevented the touchbar from activating at the slightest touch and did return some of the feel of actually having a row of keys.

Plus, the hot glue causes no damage to the aluminum and does hold for a good period of time.

Turn this into a product people could purchase and you'd become rich :)

My GF has a 2019 macbook pro and is using a silicon keyboard protector to avoid the touchbar as well.

I want to upgrade my macbook, but I've laughed so often at its 30$ fix for its 2000$ laptop that I just can't update to a macbook with touchbar with a straight face anymore.

I hate the Touch Bar as well, and I am very happy with my 2020 Air with a fixed keyboard and no Touch Bar. But can't you just remove the icons from the Touch Bar or set it to display the Fn keys?

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/02/27/customizing-touch-b...

The problem is that it is too easy to accidentally touch. Even if you set it to the Fn keys, a slightless faint of electrical conductivity between a side of your finger and the touchbar while you are pressing a number suffices for a key press. With a real key, you actually have to properly press the key. That might happen by accident, but is definetely harder.

Yes. It's the moments when you're carefully editing something really important... precisely pasting some line into a new location... you double and triple checked that everything is right.... and then BOOM your window is gone and replaced by some other app, or a control panel or... some weird thing happens and you're not sure what.

It's ridiculous.

The original Apple ][ had a reset key in the upper right corner of the keyboard that was WAAAAAY too easy to press.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e3/1b/53/e31b53767fad646fc635...

They eventually put a stronger spring under it so it was harder to press, but it was still terrible. There was actually a thriving after-market for $3.25 "RESET KEY PROTECTORS": square plastic tube shields that fit over the reset key so you had to stick your finger down inside of it to press reset.

https://apple2history.org/history/ah13/

RESET KEY PROTECTOR, which prevented accidental RESET on the earliest models of the Apple II, was available for only $3.25 from Special Systems Design. This was necessary because the RESET key, on the upper right of the keyboard, was easy to press because it had the same spring action as the other keys on the keyboard. Various methods (like this product) were used to stiffen that key, and make it harder to press.

https://imgur.com/a/jGpcT4Z

Special Systems Design ad for Apple ][ Reset Key Protector, from Apple Orchard v1n1 1980 Mar Apr, page 107.

https://archive.org/details/Apple-Orchard-v1n1-1980-Mar-Apr/...

Reminded me of how many times we'd accidentally kick the front of the nintendo on the floor and reset it.

Around 1994 or so One mac model (system 7) was notorious for having a power switch next to the floppy drive that looked like the eject button.

Those of us from a windows / unix back ground where for ever pushing the power button when we wanted to eject a floppy.

This brought back memories of using my first computer, a Mac IIci my dad gave to me and my brother. We had the mouse set up in front of it in a way that it was way pretty easy to hit the reset and debugger buttons, which seemed to happen more often in the middle of a spited game for some reason...

I swear on my Apple ][ (which had the stiffer spring under reset) you had to press ctrl at the same time. Mine had an after-marked Videx keyboard controller though, and maybe that was a feature of that controller?

edit: indeed, yes it was:

https://archive.org/details/Videx_Enhancer_II_Installation_a...

I forgot how amazing this controller was:

https://archive.org/details/Videx_Enhancer_II_Installation_a...

It had macros:

https://archive.org/details/Videx_Enhancer_II_Installation_a...

There is a switch on the keyboard interface card inside the ][+ that allows you to toggle between requiring CTRL be held down, or just pushing the reset key. I would assume that this was added later, and wasn't available on the earlier models.

So many homemade tweaks to fix glaring issues in expensive, premium products...

Remember the iPhone 4 where you had to hold your phone in a certain way so it wouldn't block the antenna? It's amazing that Apple can pump out products with issues like this year after year and still be a top dog.

You make it sound like Apple is the only one making hardware that has issues sometimes. They simply have to be better than the competition, and most of the time they seem to be.

Signal strength would be better if you hold it in a certain way and this was true for some other phones as well. I had an iPhone 4 and never paid attention to how I held it, and it always worked perfectly fine. Maybe it's because I used a bumper most of the time (like most people, at least here in Europe).

The return rate of the iPhone 4 was much lower than that of the 3GS [1], so apparently it did not affect many users in practice.

It's still bad design, but when I compare it to widespread issues I had with other tech devices relatively minor (e.g. spontaneously resetting Moto X 2013, self-destructing Moto 360 smartwatch back, etc., constant BlueTooth headphone drops on the Nokia 7 or 7.1).

The (by far) worst Apple design issue that affected me and people I know was the butterfly keyboard. It has left me sour for years and I considered to stop using Macs. I am very happy they have finally resolved that now. But many of the butterfly MacBooks were simply defective products. Only the later generations with seals hold up pretty well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4

I admire your resourcefulness and dedication, but it hurts me that people are resorting to literally cutting and pasting hardware workarounds just to recreate what had been a standard part of computer keyboards for decades until some highly paid, well-meaning design team decided to screw with it completely unnecessarily.

Hey Apple laptop division, if you or your social-listening analysts are reading this: I hope the price inflation permitted by inclusion of the Touch Bar helped offset the lost lifetime value of the customers that it continues to repel.

They didn't do it unnecessarilly, Apple's whole thing has been always shipping something different for the sake of being different. Sometimes it works fine, and sometimes it flops hard.

See - gems like the iMac hockey puck mice. I still wonder - who thought that was a good idea..?

Well, your take on the infamous puck mouse perfectly summarizes my attitude toward the Touch Bar: who thought this was a good idea?

Different for the sake of being different is raison d'etre for strong brands.

Wow, is there no software setting to simply disable the touchbar inputs?

Yes, you can customize and remove all the buttons so it effectively does nothing. I only have volume control on mine. This thread is a little odd with the heavy-handed touchbar hate.

Yeah, I don't like the butterfly keys, but the touchbar seems neutral to me. I've never accidentally hit the touchbar while typing. And while it has always seemed a bit gimmicky, I do appreciate some of the controls (sound, brightness, etc.).

Thanks for sharing, knew there had to be something easier than hot-gluing stuff on the laptop!

That said, I would choose physical keys over a touch bar myself.

It’s not just that. Where’s the tactile escape key? I’ve had my 2019 for a couple of months and this is the most frustrating change over my glorious 2015 mbp

On the new MacBook Pros?

You're missing the point. People don't want "nothing" up there, they want the keys that belong there.

It's great that it doesn't bother you, but some of us use those keys.

It have an easy solution, though... I just won't buy one.

Can you get rid of the persistent `esc`? I haven't been able to figure out how.

Honestly, this is a pretty regular occurrence and, in my opinion, just stems from people not even giving the Touch Bar a fair shake. As someone whose job is split between software/web development and media production/design, I'm incredibly happy with the Touch Bar. The only places I see people complaining about it is here on Hacker News and other developer-heavy sites where people just refuse to change their workflows even the slightest. I get that they don't want to and feel like they shouldn't have to but it's so ridiculous to me.

I would be upset if Apple removed the Touch Bar now. Sure, offer a Touch Bar-less option for these Luddites who won't even consider an alternative option but don't regress for their sake.

You wouldn't have any pictures of that silicon keyboard fix, would you? Or even a short tutorial?

I use Karabiner Elements to map space+1 through space+0 to F1 through F10.

I believe macOS sets up ^[number] shortcuts to do exactly that as well?

I believe the default for Ctrl-1 is to go to the first space.

But what I meant is to hold down the spacebar, then hit 1, and to make that be the same as hitting the F1 key. Because with a touchbar, there is often no F1 key, or you have to look to find it.

The Karabiner Elements profile called SpaceFN has the spacebar do double duty: If you hold it down and then press another key, then it acts as a modifier (like shift and ctrl and cmd). If you just hit the spacebar itself then it acts as the normal space key.

I'm using the F-keys to switch workspaces on the fly. I can't imagine going back. Pass on Mac.

The touch bar forces you to look at what you're doing in a place that should strictly be muscle-memory, and it's a flat surface that isn't safe to touch in an area where you rest your hands.

More than once I've hit the "back" button and inadvertently evicted myself from a browser video call, just by putting my hands on the keyboard.

tl;dr - Glad they brought back the escape key, now get rid of the rest of the touch bar.

+1 to TouchBar hate. It was a major factor in "upgrading" my personal machine to a 2020 Air, which is the best (least-worst?) of all worlds: Touch ID + F-keys. Luckily the size/performance tradeoff works for me; but anyone who needs the fastest Mac portable is boned.

My work machine is the new 16" MBP, and while the new keyboard is the best they've ever made, and the return of Esc is welcome, the goddamn TouchBar still drives me up a wall (especially when tweaking audio volume, which is something one wants to do instantly and reflexively).

It's easy to change this behaviour

Open the System Preferences app. Select the Keyboard option (third row, sixth item) On the first tab (also called Keyboard), locate the dropdown for "Touch Bar shows" and choose "Expanded Control Strip".

While I'd still prefer keys, this is quite helpful, thanks for sharing!

The UX for volume and brightness on the touchbar isn't as intuitive as I'd expect from Apple, but you can press and slide to adjust them. Took me a few weeks to realize I didn't have to tap the volume or brightness button and then adjust using the up or down buttons.

Whoa. I've been on the 16" MBP for a few months now and didn't know that. This reduces my hatred of the touch bar by double digit percentages, for sure. Thank you!

Yes, that helps, but I still have to take a beat and look down, as opposed to muscle-memory and not even thinking about it.

My wife bought a MacBook Air last year, and the row of function keys with Touch ID sensor at the end is perfect. I'm so jealous, and hope they add the option to get that keyboard layout on the next iteration of the MBP.

> I also love that in theory someday I'll have one cable to rule them all

True, although they could have done what many of the pc laptop makers have done. They still provide their proprietary charger with many models (ie. ThinkPad connector), but the USB-C port can also be used to charge the computer if you one already or want to pony up for a USB-C charger. For example, I've used my macbook pro charger to charge my last couple PC laptops too (ThinkPad and Acer). Like you said, then I only need one charger on my desk.

I assume these manufacturer's do this because their own charger, especially the barrel chargers that some manufacturers use, are cheaper than USB-C chargers/cables. In Apple's case, they could have kept the magsafe connector because it's a better connector. But, I assume it was lost to cost savings or aesthetics.

My gripe with the touch bar is that for every IDE you have to customise it to see the function keys by default. It's so damn annoying. Why can't the default layout be just the Fn keys ?

> Why can't the default layout be just the Fn keys ?

Because then no software would have used it. (Said ironically)

"Settings: Keyboard: Touch Bar shows" lets you permanently set to F keys or (my preference) the Extended Control Strip.

You can change it to show the F-keys by default in macOS settings. Then by pressing Fn you can view the "special" mode.

Because 95% of the people don't use them and for them having an emoji picker, a volume, brightness control is more useful. The small group of people who actively use the Fn keys can just enable this checkbox at the settings.

Someday they should make a pro model for the 5% of people who don't care about emoji pickers.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a big mainstream corporation to address the needs of 5% of their market share.

And lose touch typing

FWIW, I really hate IDEs (usually ported over from other platforms with little thought) that use function key shortcuts for commonly-used actions. I instantly remap "run" in every IDE to ⌘R.

The touch bar is really, really awful. I'd definitely pay more to get rid of it.

- It's incredibly sensitive, so a slightly misplaced touch on the number row sometimes results in a wild function key that snaps me out of whatever I'm doing (launches iTunes, goes to Spaces, adjusts brightness).

- It's distracting. It's either a lighted row of fake buttons, or a constantly changing offering of useless app shortcuts. It turns on and off (again, distracting).

- The UX of using it as function keys is in every way worse than a physical button. You can't tell if the click registered by feel. Sometimes it even seems like it reacts to a click but then nothing happens.

I’ve found that the Touch Bar’s fundamental flaw is that it doesn’t handle unintended touches well (which sadly affects multiple Apple technologies, including my Watch and even the trackpad occasionally), and that is directly related to the fact that it has no raised elements.

Furthermore, one of its main added features — the ability to do gestures that keys can’t do — just isn’t valuable. I haven’t seen a single example of something that was easier to do on the Touch Bar when I have a giant screen and trackpad/mouse already. I don’t need micro-scrubber interfaces or color sliders or Emoji bars, and the volume/brightness sliders are imprecise.

Despite customizing the bar with BetterTouchTool, including “vibrate” feedback, I invariably found I had to remove more and more things from the bar over time. Any functions in the central part of the bar were invariably triggering by accident. It was just too distracting to have things randomly happening when my finger slid onto something that doesn’t feel like an active panel.

Now, therefore, I have a Touch Bar with just a few things: a battery status indicator on the left end (near the thankfully-now-real Esc key), and the brightness/volume/mute on the right (near the wonderful Touch ID). And that’s it. It is literally 70% empty space now. This is ridiculous for something as complex and expense-adding as the Touch Bar. A complete failure of a technology.

> I’ve found that the Touch Bar’s fundamental flaw is that it doesn’t handle unintended touches well (which sadly affects multiple Apple technologies, including my Watch and even the trackpad occasionally), and that is directly related to the fact that it has no raised elements.

It's the worst. I constantly hit mute instesd of backspace.

Changing the volume or brightness is a complete pain now. It used to be just tap the key a couple of times and that was it. I would do it as a reflex without interrupting the work I was doing. Now I have to look at where the 'button' is, and then tap and slide. Completely awful.

It's easy to change this behaviour

There are problems with that, too:

- Their “Customize Control Strip” sheet provides an arbitrary subset of volume buttons, which don’t include the ones I want. (Specifically, separate volume buttons and not “button that shows slider first”.)

- Previously I was very accustomed to feeling for the volume buttons, and even using modifier keys for very fine-grained volume changes. With default Touch Bar keys, this is basically impossible. It is sort-of-OK with BetterTouchTool customization but it took me awhile to find a combination that I liked. And, still not as good as the original volume/modifier keys.

This doesn't change that I have to look for the on screen buttons and can't just reflexively change the volume while doing something else. Changing the volume or brightness or whatever now becomes a discete task that stops me doing what I was doing before. This * 10 over the course of a day adds up to lots of distractions ovet time.

My touch bar freezes every hour or so when changing volume. I then have to close the laptop, wait for a second, and then open the laptop again. It's awful.

This is the only thing that I don't like about the touch bar. It freezes every so often for me too. However, the fix is a lot easier for me. I just open spotlight search (CMD + Spacebar) and it fixes it.

Wow! Just tried this and it works. Thank you so much.

You can also kill the relevant process: `killall ControlStrip`. I haven't had the precise problem you describe, but this did often suffice to fix strange frozen touch-bar problems.

> Despite customizing the bar with BetterTouchTool, including “vibrate” feedback, I invariably found I had to remove more and more things from the bar over time. Any functions in the central part of the bar were invariably triggering by accident. It was just too distracting to have things randomly happening when my finger slid onto something that doesn’t feel like an active panel.

Is there any way to disable the fixed `esc`? I could just ignore the touch bar, except for that. It haunts my vim experience and my attempts to use full-screen (which `esc` exists by default), since apparently my left little finger tends to rest there without my realising (maybe because I'm a vimmer?).

BetterTouchTool can remove the “esc” (or any key) entirely but I don’t think there is a normal macOS way to do it.

You mentioned the volume/brightness sliders as being imprecise. I don’t have a MBP, but I noticed that touchscreen sliders are really difficult to use accurately. Whenever I slide to a value I wanted, lifting my finger inevitably moves the slider over just a little bit selecting an adjacent value (just by virtue of my finger not being lifted straight up). Is this the issue?

I’m sure I have had sliders mishave like that, too. Mostly I just don’t want a slider in the first place; I prefer feeling for the volume up/down keys and tweaking the volume bit by bit, sometimes using modifier keys for extra precision. It is incredibly easy to input “slightly louder” in the old way. It is unnecessarily hard to input “slightly louder” with a wonky touch slider. And, at times I have blown up the speaker by touching it the wrong way.

You can just flick left/right on the volume/brightness icons to adjust a single increment, without having to bring out the slider. This isn't documented anywhere, it's another one of those hidden features you just have to learn.

The Asus Zenbook, and the Asus Zenbook Duo, seem to expand on the idea in a more useful way. I am a bit surprised we didn't see the Macbook Pro go to a similar design (I.E. using the track pad as a display, or moving the track pad and adding a second display).

Same here: I love the Touch ID but the touch bar is awful. The bar always moves around and the buttons I want are always at a different spot or just not there.

Magsafe or no Mac. Also touch bar needs to go. I mean, regardless of usability, just look at that eyesore! It used to be that Macs were for professionals. Now it's for showoffs only. Sorry. I really used to love Macs...

I wonder why they haven’t replaced touchID with FaceID on MacBooks. There’s a camera and I find FaceID to be so much more seamless.

I suspect it's because of the target thickness the lid -- and the camera is located in the part that tapers.

Does the sensor need to be in the same place as the camera or could it be at the bottom of the screen?

FaceID requires more than a camera, there's an additional sensor involved

> in theory someday I'll have one cable to rule them all

I predict a future with USB-D that's incompatible with USB-C and on and on...

Everything is going wireless. There are still some items that require plugging in but headphones, keyboards and mice, even hard drives, are all going wireless.

I don't understand why people hate the touch bar or the keyboard. It's imperfect yes but the entire MBP keyboard+trackpad layout enables me to be insanely productive. The only reason I don't buy something like a Mac Mini is because I can't get a peripheral keyboard that is the same as the one on the MBP. The only thing I wish it had was a number pad.

Maybe you're just not realizing its potential. I definitely recommend checking out some cool extensions to the touch bar such as Pock https://pock.dev/

The Touchbar is terrible for Visual Studio Debugging. I have to take my eyes off the screen and cant rest my finger on F10 to step through code. That is ANTI productive. One of the reasons I spring for a macbook is so I can run MacOS, Windows or Linux on solid hardware. The touchbar is fine for things like Logic ProX or some other non development tool, but I need permanent function keys to work in Windows/Visual Studio. Thats a large part of what I do. IMO the touch bar is a GREAT idea if you also have physical function keys on the keyboard.

I guess a large part is that you can't use it without looking at it. If you're a touch typist you want to be able to do everything on the computer without thinking or moving your hands from the home row.

So there are a couple of glaring problems:

1. The keyboard. Ugh. The keyboard was ostensibly changed to shave half a millimeter off the thickness of an MBP. 0.5mm. The old chiclet keyboard was fine. The new one is basically worse in every way. It's louder, feels crappier to type on, has a high failure rate (as witnessed by Apple's free repair program) and is otherwise expensive to replace. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about the keyboard; and

2. The touch bar. This was is more mixed. The big problem is you don't have an option for not having it and Apple's reason for adding it is simply to raise the ASP (average selling price) of Mac SKUs. That's it. The old Macbook Air was too successful. Many people object to it because you lost a row of function keys with tactile feedback (ie physical key). Some really objected to the loss of a physical Escape button. Probably vim users.

I agree with you that Touch ID is great. I sure wish the latest iPhones had it (you could put a sensor on the back if you didn't want to lose the screen real estate). Face ID is absolutely atrocious.

Anyway, the problem here is that basically Johnny Ive went insane, chasing thinness to the extreme. Design is the art of compromise (as they say) and no compromising on thinness led to shitty products (eg the 12" Macbook).

There are many people here (myself included) that for years simply wanted a 13" Macbook Air with an upgraded screen (as close to edgeless as possible and higher res) and more memory. That's it. We waited for years. We got the shitty 12" Macbook instead.

It's incredibly frustrating to be so close to perfection but to take a giant step backwards instead.

Well put. I tried the new 16" keyboard, and while its way better than my 2018 MBP, its still not good enough. Chasing thinness really just seems to be something a select few wanted. As the name implies, I wanted a "Pro" laptop that had high spec processing, ram and storage. What I got is a laptop that doubles as a lap warmer, white noise generator, and user hostile to OS environments other than MacOS. So now I have a mid spec Surface Pro for development, and use the macbook for more creative type endeavors. I wish I could find a way to extract the keyboard from this surface and put it in my macbook. That would make me less annoyed by the heat and fan while running windows.

I disagree with everything stated here and, maybe I'm just lucky, but I haven't had any issues at all with the keyboard on any of my Macbook Pros (work, personal, or my SO's) and I can't go back to not having a Touch Bar.

I'm really curious about the numbers surrounding this. Especially with the latest sales figures, I'm curious if this is just a vocal minority or if most users agree with you that this is a step backward.

I don't hate it as much as I hate that it isn't an option. If it were a $500 add on I would never ever choose it as an option for my laptop, and now it's kind of mandatory if you want a fast macOS laptop. I will accept a laptop from my company with the touchbar, but I don't know that I would be willing to buy one myself. It's been a while since I used windows or linux as my dev OS, but might be willing to give it a shot with a good thinkpad. I hope apple makes it an option for the bigger faster MBP

I can't stand the Macbook Pro keyboard and touchpad. I accidentally input the touchpad on the regular basis because it's enormous, and the keyboard slows down my typing speed substantially. My "o" repeats somewhat often as well, as other people have suggested.

My best quality of life improvement with this machine was to connect an external windows keyboard and mouse. Swap the windows key with the alt key, and you have a beautiful macos keyboard.

> USB-C was all about standardizing.

USB-C is all about having a thinner connector and giving the appearance of standardizing.

Previously if the cable fit, it worked. There were just a bunch of different cables but that had largely settled down to USB-A cables to like 2 maybe 3 connectors on the other end.

Now we have cables that have the same connector on each end but do vastly different things and there's no clue as to what.

- Does it carry data or just power?

- Does it carry a video signal?

- How much data can it carry?

- How much power can it charge?

A USB-C cable that does everything is limited to about 30cm (1 foot) in length, give or take. I know because I use them to connect to a USB-C dock. If I wanted a longer cable to connect to something else, I could. I'd just have to remember not to use it for the dock.

How is this a good user experience?

It's also not as sturdy. I managed to break one of my ports on a 2016 macbook. Now I try to never let the cable hang from the port.

USB-C is shit. Apple lightning physical connector is still lightyears ahead in reliability, maintenance (dust) and physical size.

USB-3 standard is even a bigger mess. This whole USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 2 is the biggest clusterfuck in the history of naming things.

Somewhere I read that USB-C's cable design was informed by Apple's experience with thee lightning connector. In particular, one of the changes is that the lightning connector has the springs on the hardware side, which means that if the springs break, you have a major headache. USB-C puts the springs in the connector, so if the springs break, you just buy a new cable. That seems like a pretty big improvement, to me.

Anything can brake. It is all about probabilities, potential failures etc.

Spring failure is less probable than breaking a male part of a connector.

If a spring breaks, you have a second one.

If both break, you keep the charging functionality.

You break the male connector. Game Over.

…then you buy a new connector, as mentioned previously?

I mean the most delicate part, a male part in the usb-c port itself. Naming is hard >_<

Oh yes, that part always seemed like a weak spot to me. I guess it prevents exposed connectors on the cable? But that's not all that useful…

exactly :/ Just plain silly. I've already seen two phones in the wild with the damaged usb-c port. User made an error and tried to charge usb-c with micro usb? Yes. Was that preventable with a better design? Yes.

I love the Touch Bar. I have almost never used the F# keys in macOS apps, in a whole decade now.

I decided to become an early adopter of "USB-C for everything" in ~2017 and do not regret it. Between my laptops (work + personal), tablet, phone, VR, game console, headphones it is really nice to have a single 65w wall wart and a single cable that works for everything and only need to bring one charger.

The one holdout still is an e-ink e-reader, the Kindle Oasis's top review is a one-star review talking about lack of USB-C.

I might switch to an apple-based consumer tablet when they put USB-C on them. The pro tablet models already have USB-C but I don't need that kind of power.

USB-C is really nice. There are some complaints about cables but if you buy brand name cables (anker, cable matters, etc) they seem to last forever and don't have the problems the tech blogs speculate about.

I think twice in five years am I glad I had the magsafe adapter but I'm happy to live without it to avoid carting around a proprietary charger all the time. We lost my wife's magsafe charger while traveling and found out that those cannot be bought for any price when in rural areas, especially outside of first-world countries. Every town has a shop that sells/services USB-C phones/tablets/laptops though.

USB-C would take off like wildfire if there actually existed any proper USB-C hubs - not what's currently called a "USB-C hub" which is more like a breakout box which at best replicates the single USB-C port it takes up and adds a bunch of legacy ports; I'm talking about a proper hub that plugs into a single port and turns it into multiple ports, like those dirt cheap old USB-A hubs. You literally cannot move to an all-USB-C existence because with rare exceptions 1 port = 1 device.

As I've written before on HN:

A hub with multiple USB-C downstream ports cannot exist with any sort of reasonable UX. The C port supports multiple "alternate modes," which remap USB-data pins to other functions (like DisplayPort, HDMI, Thunderbolt, analog audio, etc.)

The various alternate modes are not simply transporting display/audio/Thunderbolt data over a USB channel. It's the difference between packet switching and circuit switching.

Plugging in, for example, an HDMI adapter to one downstream port affects what devices can be plugged in to other downstream ports.

A true HDMI adapter would revert all other downstream ports to USB 2.0. But... an HDMI adapter that's really a DisplayPort with internal DP -> HDMI converter can potentially allow USB 3.0 on the other downstream ports (or, potentially, ONE other port with DP and the rest with USB 2.0).

Either way, plugging in the HDMI adapter means your USB-C headphones might stop working (depending on whether they are analog or have an internal DAC).

How are users expected to understand that they need a certain type of USB-C headphones and a certain type of HDMI adapter in order for both to work at the same time?

From the point of the user: I have a mouse, a keyboard, a display, an external drive, and occassionally I need to plug in a flash drive, printer or some other device. There is one or two of those new small rounded USB ports on my computer which is not enough. How can I possibly plug in everything I need?

It's not the users' fault that the whole USB-C thing amounts to a very fast, very efficient and elegant garbage fire. It's the greatest port ever, it can do everything, except not at the same time, so I have to choose whether I want to plug in my keyboard or my display.

> How can I possibly plug in everything I need?

You cant. That's the entire point of my post. There's no way to accommodate your desire[1] with the USB-C port.

[1] To plug everything into one port with some sort of port expander thingy and have it "just work".

I (a) remapped escape and (b) taped a piece of cardboard over everything except the fingerprint scanner, and the touch bar works much better.

A standard data cable for laptops is fine I guess, but I want a distinct power-only cable that isn't complicated enough to enable malware attacks. And battery swaps. And a pony.

I had a XPS13 a couple of years ago and the USB-C port was not Thunderbolt 3. The new 13” MBP has four TB3 ports which is a pretty big deal to me.

You forgot that the Dell XPS 13 also has a touch screen... and there is a 2-1 model with a tablet mode and an (awful) pen.

Given my experience with non MS Surface touch screens, I'm not really sure if I consider that a strong pro--if I were writing the sales pitch for the laptop yeah, it's a pro, but in terms of day to day use, I'm not sure how much I'm looking for a touchscreen on a laptop.

Regardless though, the gesture support on MacOS touch-pads would probably cancel it out as anything I'd probably do with the touchscreen frequently could be supported through a gesture.

Touch screens are useful as a shortcut to mouse or gesture movements.

Have you ever purchased a Dell ? Well I just did (Dell XPS 13 2-in-1) last month and let me tell how you how horrible the driver and support has been. I really wish I could chuck this brand new 1400$ device out the Window for days of troubleshooting I've got through. I deeply regret it and wish I purchased a Surface device instead (note I'm not an Apple user)

For the price premium and judging by the quality of the drivers that Apple produces, I WOULD MUCH RATHER PAY THE PREMIUM than struggle with Dell.

What kind of driver issues did you get?

Bluetooth and Sound. Take a look at the XPS forums, there's more than a dozen posts on each topic. Dell engineers haven't pushed a fix in over a month after delivering faulty BIOS drivers.

I tried to return the POS but Dell wont take it back since I was a few days past their 30 day return policy. Let's not forget I had to deal with a minor fallout due to the pandemic, but their "customer service" department doesn't care about personal issues and difficulties customers have had during the last month and only profit and sales.

I'm never buying Dell

There's a reason Dell produces stuff cheaply.

Did you purchase it with a credit card that offers longer return periods on your purchases?

I had a dell latitude at work - horrific. Replaced with an xps-13 - much better, but wouldn't recommend. At home replaced my mbp with a surface laptop, deleted windows installed linux - bliss.

I regret not purchasing a Surface device, despite the extra cost over the Dell.

Are latest Surface models working okay with Ubuntu?

Couldn't say; using arch, on non-touchscreen, all good.

It's pretty disappointing how few ports the XPS 13 has. Only two data ports (both USB-C), but it's really only gonna one because you're gonna be using the other one for charging all the time. And I use hardware security keys for everything so I always have one plugged into my laptop, so if have zero ports free and would need to attach a USB-C hub to do anything else. At least there's wireless keyboard and mice ...

Any idea on battery life comparisons between the two? I'm not an Apple fan by any stretch, and don't have any Apple hardware at all except MacBooks, but honestly, the Mac here might be worth the extra money for the ports, build quality, and longevity. My current laptop is a 2013 top of the line MacBook Pro 15" that is still chugging along fine without any problems.

One reason I'll recommend an Apple product over any PC to friends is the Apple Store. Aside from being able to see and play with the hardware, Apple's support experience is better than any PC maker's.

Why doesn't Dell open a store in every neighborhood that has an Apple store? They should be able to match the Apple consumer experience, but more importantly (to Dell), they could run business support operations from those stores.

I'd be a lot more likely to buy the XPS machine you mentioned if I could take it someplace when the coil whine becomes apparent.

5 years ago I destroyed my dells screen, thrre was someone driving to my place the same day and he replaced the screen on site and I could work on. Where would apple ever do this?

This is what a lot of people don't know. If you pay for premium support from Dell, it is significantly better than the support experience with Apple.

No having to check for appointment slots each day, hoping to get one two weeks out. No having to arrive at the store at the start of the day, get in the same-day queue, and hope to get seen for a 15 min checkup within 4 hours, and then lose your machine for days, if not weeks, while the repairs are done off site.

Dell premium consumer (consumer, not talking about their business support options here) support gets you next day engineer to your home, with replacement parts on hand to repair your fault in your home. Three unsuccessful repairs on the same component results in a total replacement, usually with an upgrade.

If an Apple user is having trouble setting up Time Machine, they can book a slot at the store to have somebody help them configure that. Is Dell going to send somebody to my parents home to help them with that?

Apologies, if it wasn't clear given context, I was explicitly talking about hardware support. Dell doesn't do vertical integration of hardware and software, so I doubt they'll send someone to your parents home to help them configure Windows (or Ubuntu).

That said, your parents will still be subject to having to check for appointment slots each day, hoping to get one two weeks out, or waiting in store for hours for the next slot.

They'll also be subject to lots of random bugs in Time Machine, which has become a decidedly second class citizen as far as support within macOS goes. I cannot reliably do a time machine backup over wifi anymore, and am now subject to doing it via USB only instead. This is a much bigger problem now that my USB disk is still stuck in the office, and I've been unable to get into the office for over 2 months.

> Dell doesn't do vertical integration of hardware and software

That's a good point. It's a reason why comments like the one at the top comparing a Dell to an Apple computer don't make a lot of sense. They aren't apples-to-apples comparisons.

BTW, your Apple store experience sounds terrible. We have a handful of Apple things in my home and have used in-store support probably ten times over the years and have never had the experience you describe.

It's the experience I've been facing in London, UK for the last 5 years.

I'm 'fortunate' to have those options when I'm in London. Friends and family in other parts of Europe don't have a store near them, and their only support option is to send their faulty unit away for 2-4 weeks, which often results in me doing their support for them, as I'm (or I suppose, was) often flying through and could do it as a favour.

> That's a good point. It's a reason why comments like the one at the top comparing a Dell to an Apple computer don't make a lot of sense. They aren't apples-to-apples comparisons.

Yes, and no. This is a technical forum. The software support Apple offers isn't (and probably shouldn't be) useful to the vast majority on here, as any software support you can get from an Apple store, you can get on Google significantly faster.

Within that context, I think the comparison is reasonable. We can all fix any software issues we run into (within limits, those limits vary by platform, arguably more limited in Apple land) ourselves, and those that we can't we're at the mercy of our upstream supplier anyway.

From my experiences dealing with Apple Support regarding software bugs that have come about through software updates, I have no positive things to say. They did offer me $200 worth of accessories to make up for all of my time they wasted after ~18 months of one incident, but that's a poor amount of compensation for the amount of my real time they wasted.

For what it's worth, my experience closely mirrors oarsinsync's, as far as Dell vs. Apple consumer-level hardware support goes.

The Dell tech who came to my house (next day) had people skills as good as any Apple Genius, and better tech skills to boot. He was in and out in less than 45 minutes, and I think he finished less than 24 hours after I called Dell (though that isn't promised as part of the contract).

I'm still happily in the Apple camp, mostly because I do appreciate the integrated ecosystem. However, there's simply no comparison when it comes to after-sales hardware support--Apple has a lot to learn from Dell.

I don't doubt that you've had a better Apple Store experience than some of us, but:

1. I've had poor Apple service in several cities across the US, so I think good service is the exception rather than the rule

2. Many small/medium cities only have one Apple store (which is inconvenient) and rural places have none (which is worse). As far as I know, there are no geographical restrictions, within the lower 48, on where Dell will travel for next-day at-home service.

3. Dell at-home support costs about the same as AppleCare+.

I bought a dell gaming monitor from best buy. It had like 12 stuck pixels. Dell overnighted me a replacement with a return label.

I'm a macbook fanboy but holy hell that is some GREAT service from dell.

This right here. I worked along side IT at a medium/large manufacturing company for my internship and a few times they had Dell support specialists driving out to fix hardware on the spot or give you a new one same day. For their company iPads the support was- "drive a half hour to the nearest Apple store with the shit and hope they can help you."

For years my employer paid for on-site support and when we would call for help, the technician was almost always from some third party service (Unisys?). The experience was rarely good.

Dell should bring that all in-house.

Dell has way better support than Apple. (I only have experience with it in Europe, but I think in the US would be the same)

You don't need to take anywhere. You call support and a technician will show up at your office/house and change the part on the spot. [1]

Where Apple shines is when you travel internationally. Apple offer an international warranty. If you buy a product in the EU they will fix/exchange it under warranty in the US or anywhere else in the world.

[1] https://www.dell.com/downloads/emea/services/uk/en/in_home_s...

Everybody is talking about hardware support. What about software? Will they send a technician out to show you how to attach a document to an email?

Keep in mind that is not the basic warranty service. If you buy prosupport your call will not be routed to India and you can get the in-home or in-business service. If not, you'll be having a bad time.

Only for hardware, and only if you pay extra for it.

Dell's higher tier hardware support is pretty great, but it isn't an apples-to-apples (sorry) comparison.

> Why doesn't Dell open a store in every neighborhood that has an Apple store?

How would they manage to keep any competitive pricing if they do that? They have cheap prices because they hire totally cheap support labors doing crappy support.

~~2399$~~ 2999$ (EDIT: see replies) in the US, and.... 3924$ for the same model if you buy it in Europe (3629 EUR). That's a bit outrageous.

I still have a Macbook Air 2013, and have been looking for an upgrade for like 5 years, but I was not willing to pay 4k for a laptop with a worse keyboard, a worse power plug, an OS that in 2020 still doesn't have any kind of windows tiling capabilities and quite poor virtual desktops support, a useless touchbar, no wifi6, and the worst webcam ever made.

Selling it at twice the price that in the US doesn't help. I can pay for a plane ticket, and still get it cheaper there.

Also, for a company that markets their laptops as having great displays, its quite ironic that their OS still doesn't support any kind of window tiling to use them efficiently in 2020. The display isn't micro-LED either, so it is instantaneously outdated, and well... the retina display doesn't help you see your macbook-using coworkers any better because their webcams have a resolution of 1x1 pixels.

Sounds like a good business opportunity. What's stopping me from buying them all up at the Apple store and selling them to overseas customers?

VAT

Different keyboards for starters?

American layout actually adds value to the laptop in Europe.

You can change the layout in the apple store when buying it here, but that adds 4 weeks to the delivery time..

in Europe, I can chose whatever keyboard I want, and I would think it's the same for the US store. I've configure both MacBooks I bought in the last decade with English keyboards because it's the only layout where {} and [] don't seem like a cruel joke by language designers.

Ehm, customs? VAT import taxes?

As an individual, I can just by it in the US for personal use, and carry it over. But if you intent to transporting them for selling them, the story is very different.

Legally, you are required to pay VAT and import duty when buying in the US and importing it, even for personal use.

Chances are, you aren't checked. But if you are, having the original packaging or charger will be noticed by customs. They might even have data to determine country of origin from a serial number, or notice that it's a version that wasn't available when you left for the US etc. And if they ask, the burden of proof is yours to show you bought it in the EU.

How long does one need to stay in the US for that not to hold ?

I lived there for one year, and bought a lot of stuff in the US for personal use (like clothes). When I moved back to Europe, I just moved everything with me without paying any VAT.

I was worried that they would make me pay VAT from socks and underwear to laptop, phone, and everything. Asked about it, and was told that I didn't had to pay anything.

Six months.

https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/calculation-c... (the linked PDF).

This is not EU specific, duty is typically due on consumer good when you move them between countries if you haven't owned them long enough. It's not always enforced or enforceable of course, but it's there. See for example people buying cars on either side of the US and Canada border for use on the other side.

> What's stopping me from buying them all up at the Apple store and selling them to overseas customers?

Import duties and VAT. VAT accounts for much of the price difference, OP didn't explain which Europe they're talking about, but assuming a 20% VAT a 2999 machine costs $3598.8 to the end-user.

Means you're working with a 325.2 price difference, which doesn't even cover import duties.

So pretty much as ever, if you're round-tripping through the US, picking up an MBP there is nice. It does not however make for a business.

> So pretty much as ever, if you're round-tripping to the US, picking up an MBP there is nice.

Just keep in mind that if you stay in the US for less than 6 months, you should be paying VAT on it on your way back (see other comments). Otherwise this probably counts as tax evasion, which comes with pretty hefty fines in some EU countries.

The price $2999 in the US. There's no markup here, Apple's EU pricing just includes 20% VAT ($600) and implicit AppleCare (~$300) as required by EU consumer law.

Thanks for the correction, 2399$ was the price of the comparable Dell modell. The VAT and AppleCare makes sense.

> implicit AppleCare (~$300) as required by EU consumer law

I wouldn't say AppleCare is the same as having the extended warrenty to obey the EU consumer law. AppleCare includes a bunch of things that are outside of normal "warrenty" coverage.

While this is probably true, I don't think it would be entirely fair to beat apple up for not having an EU only warranty program tuned to the minimal that is required.

I'd love for someone to chime in with specific details. I looked quickly at the French and US sites to compare. France does offer AppleCare+ for 299,00 € on a random MacBook I chose.

The US page is pretty clear that it extends a 1-year hardware warranty to 3-years and extends 90 days of technical support. In recent years they seem to focus more on accidental damage (with an additional per-incident fee).

The French website is more hand-wavy around improved hardware warranty. It also mentions the tech support, but the value seems to be the accidental damage.

The accidental damage math in the US is a tough one for me. $300 for AppleCare+ and $50 per incident goes a long way towards paying outright for a repair or buying a new laptop. The hardware warranties seem to be significantly better in Europe and historically the biggest value-add in the US. AppleCare+ just seems a lot less useful in Europe.

For at least 20 years it's been cheaper to buy a round trip ticket to the USA and a macbook pro than it is to just buy one in Australia.

Isn't this just because you (illegally) fail to declare it for duty purposes?

If so it wouldn't have much to do with apple, no?

> its quite ironic that their OS still doesn't support any kind of window tiling to use them efficiently in 2020

Luckily, the accessibility API make this quite possible to do if you're one of the people that can't work without it. (Do keep in mind that note everyone uses tiling to work "efficiently".)

> The display isn't micro-LED either, so it is instantaneously outdated

What? How many computers actually ship with microLED today?

> the retina display doesn't help you see your macbook-using coworkers any better because their webcams have a resolution of 1x1 pixels

Even with the current climate, reading text and looking at images in retina resolution is a huge part of most people's jobs. If you haven't tried a Retina Display, I suggest you do: it's quite nice.

> Objectively, seems to me that list used to be a lot longer on the Apple side

Maybe, but I think the price gap used to be a lot longer too?

(As in, Apple's dragged it up (or perhaps arguably dragged up build quality or whatever that's impacted price) not vice versa.)

Apple Pros:

* macOS

Debatable.

Personally this is a con.

Pro is the quality of third party apps. OS is irrelevant as long as the hardware works.

I think the resale value is Apples real strength. When I upgraded my 2016 13” mbp to the new airbook, Apple offered 60-70% of the airbook cost in return for the mbp. Because tech-wise there are just so many hood options. I ended up selling it to a local third party reseller that I’ve used in the past for 80% of the cost of the air. I can’t remember the original price for the mbp, but it was around what the air cost me.

Compare that to the surface pro my wife has, which essentially lost all its value the moment she walked out the store. It’s an excellent machine by all means, and Linux subsystem is great, but it’s not actually cheaper than a Mac when you factor in the resale value.

I do live in Denmark, and things may be different elsewhere, but the only hardware that has any resale value around here is Apple.

I have the latest Dell model (XPS 13 9300), and I'm left with a bit of chagrin as I probably would have looked into this new 13" MBP instead had it been available a few months ago, but overall I've been happy with my purchase. I'm not really "in" the Apple ecosystem so I'm probably a bit biased though.

A few other Dell Pros:

* 16:10 aspect ratio. The 4K touchscreen in general is fantastic, nearly borderless and really stunning in person. Dell has honed in on some great industrial design for the XPS 13 line. The laptop is incredibly compact for the feature set and screen size.

* Keyboard is fantastic. Trackpad is great, but not quite Mac level. They have been improving this considerably over the years and this latest iteration is the best yet.

* Linux support, even though I ended up not using it due to "okay" HiDPI support.

* i7, FWIW. Not sure the thermals really allow you to take advantage of full perf gains from the better processor.

* Another Dell Pro which has made me feel better about the purchase has been the free year of Next Day On-Site ProSupport. My original lid had a mark on it and no shit they scheduled a technician to come to my apartment and replace it the next day. Macs obviously have the advantage of Apple stores but in this case I was really happy with the level of CS Dell was able to provide.

Dell Cons:

* I was previously an (Arch) Linux user and have given Windows 10 a shot this time around, mostly because I don't have the time to be fiddling with config files these days. And while Windows does "just work", some things are a little janky still. From what I've heard of MacOS these days, things are not necessarily perfect there either, so maybe a toss-up. I will say Windows being so linux-friendly with WSL has made the transition much easier.

* Two ports has been not really a huge issue. I find that either I'm docked, in which case I have a whole other set of ports to use, or I'm not really plugging in more than two USB C accessories at the same time.

That new aspect ratio has me desperately wanting to upgrade.

Well that and I have xps 15 and that was fine when I took a class a year or two ago but I find it a bit bigger than I like for laying about on the couch and etc.

> 16:10 aspect ratio.....

MacBook ( Pro, Air or just MacBook ) has always been using 16:10 ratio.

16:10 on Dell is something new in the PC space that everyone is making a big fuss about it. Although I hope this change will finally run across the industry so we are back to 16:10 instead of stupid video consumption orientated 16:9 Ratio.

Interesting, I did not realize this. I also did not realize that Retina is not 4k, though I doubt this makes a huge amount of difference on the tiny screen sizes.

Funny. You pine for 16:10 everywhere and I pine for 4:3 everywhere. If software is eating the world, then why doesn't the ultimate screen ratio for development take over computers?

You mean the ratio used on non-Pro iPads?

the 3:2 ratio on the surface laptops is pretty nice imo

Old things are new again. 16:10 was the standard around 10 years ago. I still have an old Dell Core 2 Duo circa 2010 that has a resolution of 1920:1200

The only Dells that are comparable to the Macbook Pro line are the 7000 series Latitudes.

The build quality of the XPS line is just not up to snuff.

* Better Trackpad

That is an understatement.

Genuinely curious, have you had your MacBook Pro knocked over from the power cord since switching away from MagSafe?

Lots of people complain about missing MagSafe but I’ve never seen or heard of this actually happening. I’m sure it has happened but it just doesn’t seem like a big problem. For me, just in the past month I’ve had the usb charger yanked out by the cord multiple times by people and pets tripping over it while working from home, but the laptop is heavy enough that it doesn’t budge and the cable comes out cleanly.

The benefit of having a standard port now, being able to get monitor, power, and usb connected through one cable, or being able to use the usb-c charger to charge other devices when traveling, is well worth the change IMO. I also used to get little metal specks stuck in the MagSafe port, and then realize the laptop hasn’t been charging all day and have to clear it out and make sure the contacts were connected securely. I wasn’t a big fan of MagSafe at all.

My dog did it on several occasions.

The very first day I had my first USB-C mac i had an incident with my standing desk that Magsafe would have saved.

These days I tend to use my laptop at my desk with external monitors, but the thing that worries me the most when I'm somewhere else is the yanking of the cable weakening the and/or reducing the reliability. I had to re-solder the power adaptor on an old Acer a few times, I don't think I've got the parts or skills (or time) to do that on a few year old Mac.

The good thing about USB-C chargers, if you break the cable you can just buy a new one. No soldering necessary. I chew through a lot of MagSafe charges in the past few years. I fixed most of them, but you can't disassemble them without damaging it.

EDIT: If you talking about the connector inside your laptop, that is a different story.

Yeah, the connector inside the computer.

MagSafe was great when the average battery life was under four hours. You have to be plugged-in in weird places. It saved my laptop a couple of times when I was at University. The problem is not just knocking over the whole laptop, but you can damage the port as well.

With the current 8+ hours battery life, I only have it plugged in when I'm at my desk, so no risk of tripping over.

For me, the standard port overweights any other downside.

That's an interesting take on it

Still, I wouldn't want to discharge the battery if it's not needed as to save the cycles.

Isn't it worse to keep the battery 100% charged at all times?

Not any longer, as a modern device will discharge the battery a bit to keep it healthy.

I can see that it's not a necessity for many people, but I still have a 2015 13" Macbook Pro with MagSafe in addition to a newer 15" Macbook Pro, and my experience using both every day is that I positively mourn the difference.

I'm shocked that Apple has not taken it upon themselves to ensure that there's a usable magnetic adapter for the USB-C port, under their brand or through a partner. I've tried a couple of third-party adapters that were utter failures. I hope somebody succeeds someday, preferably Apple or with Apple's blessing, because I would be very slow to try another third-party adapter otherwise.

I have younger kids, who would sometimes kick my cord with MagSafe and it wouldn't be a big deal; I would just connect again. Now I don't use my laptop around my kids if I'm charging.

I knocked it over with MagSafe and it still failed to disconnect. It was the 2011 L-shaped plug and I managed to yank it at the perfectly wrong angle I suppose. The macbook lived but ended up with scratches and dents (that's how I discovered that an aluminum chassis maybe wasn't the best idea for a laptop). The new flimsy usb-c cable has a better chance of actually disconnecting.

I haven't had an incident yet, but I'm way more careful with a young kid (or myself). Leaving one charging on a couch, for example, isn't something I'm comfortable with both because of it sliding a foot or two on to the carpet or bending the connector.

More annoyance comes from removing of the charging indicators that were on the magsafe port. The only clue is a small "ding" sound when it starts charging, but is easy to miss and won't happen in deep sleep. I've plugged in a laptop not noticing someone had unplugged the other end until the next morning my computer was still dead. It was also nice that you could see that amber charging light turn green so you knew it was charged without opening the lid and waking it up.

I was concerned about that myself, but so far so good. I suspect the ability to charge on either side makes a difference. I usually plug in on whatever side is closer to a wall and out of the way. Combined with all the other usb-c/tb benefits, i think the tradeoff is worth it.

It really stuns me how “MacOS” doesn’t appear anywhere in the Pros (or the Cons). That’s literally the main discriminant between choosing an Apple machine over any other brand, and there’s no mention of it.

By missing that main difference the comparison is reduced to pure comparison of commodities, and of course the result is that the Apple machine is ‘unjustifiably’ more expensive. The Apple ecosystem is literally why people buy Apple machines rather than any other brand.

I’m also mystified nobody else brought this up.

At this point macOS is just a different list of pros and cons all by itself.

Often a different list for each person.

For me it is still the best OS experience by far.

MacOS has really stagnated over the years. I first started using it back in 2004, where its main competitor was pre-SP2 Windows XP. At that time you could really call MacOS advanced. At this point, it's sort of a wash. Windows does things better, Mac does other things better, and it mostly comes down to preference.

The old argument about security is mostly a wash now as well. (whereas with pre-SP2 Windows XP vs. OSX 10.4, you could legitimately claim that OSX was more secure.)

Back then, MacOS X didn't have enough third party apps to replace Windows workflow but the OS kept advancing on every release.

Now we have better third party apps on macOS than Windows but OS stopped advancing but who cares about OS anymore? It's all about apps nowadays.

My apps on Windows: KeePass, Chrome, Thunderbird, Putty, Oracle VM, Idea, EditPad Pro, Paint.NET, Battle.net, Discord, foobar2000.

My apps on macOS: Chrome, Thunderbird, OracleVM, Idea, Battle.net, Discord. Can replace Putty with Terminal ssh (I like Putty more, but that's not a big deal), can replace KeePass with text file (less security, but not a big deal either), can replace EditPad Pro with TextEdit (worse replacement, but I can live with it), can replace Paint.NET with Gimp. Not sure about foobar2000, may be DeadBeef.

And there's no software on macOS that I would miss in Windows. So that's questionable about third-party apps, at least for me. The only thing that I loved in macOS is its Terminal, because I know bash, but recently I learned a bit of PowerShell, so it's not a big advantage anymore. Also I can always spin up CentOS VM if necessary.

If you just want a unix shell this is going to be way lighter than a full-blown VM: https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/tutorial-ubuntu-on-windows#1-ov...

A fair opinion for some, but if there is still more application support on Windows, I don't see how this is a benefit to MacOS.

Useful figures, so thanks for providing those. It's been a few months since I last looked into the latest prices. I agree with you that it's still worth it.

However, I feel that without comparing the OS and tight OS integration, this doesn't represent one of the most important aspects of a comparison between the two, when considering a purchase.

I go through this same loop every time I buy a new machine... yes, usually it's "no more Apple for me!" especially when I do the price comparison. So I waver for a couple of weeks whilst I research the latest hardware and Linux distros. But then I end up buying an Apple machine. It's been the same story for me for the last 17 years.

There's plenty of people like me out there that definitely don't want to use Windows, and that want a Unix that gets out of the way. I love Linux, especially on the server, but it's generally too much hassle on a laptop and so I always gravitate back to macos.

If the $600 is an Apple tax for that, then I will gladly continue to pay it. Over the 3 years lifetime of a developer machine (or more!), my time is definitely worth more than $600 compared with constantly fiddling with Linux kernal modules and other hardware support issues. I just want to get some work done without interruptions.

Definitely would love the exact same machine without the TouchBar, though. Perhaps that would shave off $100?

Dell has supported Linux officially on the XPS 13 variants since 2012. https://bartongeorge.io/2020/01/01/introducing-the-2020-xps-...

Thanks. I'm am aware of this. I research this all the time, and regularly come away disappointed. I don't know if I verbalised clearly enough, but I have actively wanted good options for years, and I'm always open to whatever alternatives are current at the time of purchase.

Seriously, I'm in the market for a new laptop and there are still too many concerns relating to support for these devices... not just Dell but usually for whatever manufacturer I'm looking at. Once you start reading about people's experiences there are always issues - many of which have been discussed to death on HN.

Just because Dell claim that Linux is officially supported does not mean that it will be a smooth ride. I don't think that has changed much at all over the last few years? But perhaps this year is different.

Do you own this though? If you're using this new XPS model without power consumption issues, excellent wifi (wifi chips issues seem to always be the main downer), good mousepad behaviour? Perhaps it's finally not a problem? I will gladly lap up any positive news that you can give on this front.

I switched from a macbook to a system76 laptop around 6 years ago and the only negative I noticed functionality-wise was the worse trackpad. But I would guess that different users are sensitive to different problems.

E.g. power management isn't much of an issue for me because I use my laptop unplugged for only a couple hours per day, so I wouldn't have noticed any problems related to that.

Ahh... good to hear.

I have been keeping an eye on the system76 stuff too - not just Dell. For a long time system76 seemed to only make laptops with large keyboards with extra number pads and asymetric mouse pads which put me off (many manufacturers do this, so it's not just them).

I notice that they finally have more tenkeyless models, so slowly but surely my checklist is being satisfied. Are you still able to use a recent version of Pop!_OS after all this time, or are you using another recent version of another distro? I'm interested in the longevity in terms of being able to install up to date OSes over the years. I mean that really shouldn't be an issue with Linux - support usually only gets better as time advances and new drivers / modules are written, but it would be nice to know how you got on, regardless.

I bought the laptop back when System76 used Ubuntu and have never tried their Pop!_OS, and I use Fedora nowadays. Haven't had any problems with newer versions of Fedora.

I'm using the Thinkpad X1 Carbon 7th generation and I feel like with the latest Ubuntu 20.04 LTS it's finally at the level of usability I want in a Linux laptop. Everything works out of the box, including the speakers, camera, microphone, wifi & bluetooth, and fingerprint reader. I can even use my fingerprint for sudo! (I did have to run one or two commands to get that working though). The trackpad is also great, if a little small. Probably comparable to the Dell's. Also haven't got a chance to test real-world power consumption because I'm stuck at home lately (thank COVID for that) but it seems to be okay.

Excellent! Now the positive news is rolling in :-)

Looking at that 7th generation model now. Actually... that looks really nice. And 20.04 LTS would be pretty good for me.

>fingerprint for sudo

That's awesome! I just bought the new XPS 13 (9300) with 32gb of ram. Unboxing it today, I've heard it works flawlessly with Ubuntu 20.04 except the fingerprint reader, and Dell says that will be possible later this year.

Not XPS, but I have used Ubuntu as main dev machine on Dell Latitude Laptop for more than 6 years without much issue.

Thanks. When you say "without much issue", have you ever lost more than a few hours to "required tinkering" over those years, or was it pretty much plain sailing?

Anything else I should take a look at? What would your ideal next laptop be?

Not the OP but I've been using various Thinkpads running Ubuntu since 2010. Been using Linux for many years prior to that on desktops. Also have my family kitted out with them (again on Ubuntu). It is possible to use just fine from a default install with none to very minor tinkering required. However if you do put in a few hours of tinkering you'll reap the rewards in having the laptop behave exactly how you want it to. Here's a hint, install tlp along with the thinkpad kernel access source ("sudo apt-get install tlp tp-smapi-dkms" on Ubuntu) and set the battery charge thresholds. This will help with runtime on battery and also extend the life of the battery itself. is set to start charge at 88% and stop at 95%. In the past five years my battery has only depleted by a few percent in capacity.

I have used Macs (had 2 Mac Book Pros and a Mac Mini) and Windows but its Linux all the way now, specifically Ubuntu LTS. Not sure how people put up with Windows 10's constant forced updates. If it has to be Windows give me Windows 10 LTSC.

Ideal next laptop? Probably a Thinkpad X1 Carbon gen 7 or Dell XPS 2020.

Oooh. Nice details. I have bookmarked all of this info.

>> have you ever lost more than a few hours to "required tinkering" over those years

- Not really. And Linux ecosystem has improved tremendously in last 10 years.

For one of the colleague at the office, tried some Thinkpad , but that was not such a good experience. Now everyone on the team (> 30 people) gets Ubuntu Laptop or Desktop.

If you are going to use it main dev machine, then definitely Latitude. Ask Dell guys to preinstall it for you. They will install proprietary drivers for you.

I also have Macbook Pro 2015 model. Don't expect trackpad experience like it. I always use external mouse and keyboard any way.

Not tried XPS series yet, So can't comment.

XPS 9560 4k model (2017 15") using Arch Linux. Recently formatted and re-installed arch (i had made a mess of some core linux things over the years and wanted a clean slate), and I don't recall any specific issues that were not user error trying to install or maintain an arch installation. The main "problem" that comes to mind is optimizing battery life while getting maximum performance from the discrete GPU. I chose not to go down that path--I just dual boot windows for games. As far as system stability goes, I've had zero issues with anything noteworthy. I've never done anything unique to my kernel settings on this device. Everything that i've needed worked out of the box. I may have needed to install some packages for drivers based on my device to improve performance (install nvidia drivers, possibly proprietary touchpad drivers).

Specifically: excellent wifi support, 5-7 hours of battery life, never had a trackpad issue.

Risk areas that i haven't investigated: backlight controls aren't working right now...thats the only thing that comes to mine.

And this is using arch. I'm sure Ubuntu is even more seamless.

I'm on the same machine. Also on Arch linux with Gnome Wayland as my DE.

It's been a complete delight. Actually, it's been leaps and bounds better than macOS Catalina on my work machine.

For me, the transition to Wayland made a HUGE difference. Trackpad actually feels basically the same as macOS, and better than windows 10.

Multi-monitor support is better than macOS (which loses my monitor arrangement consistently with two identical monitors and through a usb-c dock).

Bluetooth works as expected. (Not so for macOS catalina anymore, they've fucked up an truly astounding number of things...)

Suspend/resume are both fine.

Battery life is actually around 10 hours if I'm just doing light dev.

Basically - I've been pestering my office to let me switch for a while now. I'd take an XPS running linux over the current iteration of macbook/macOS hands down.

I came to Macs as a longtime Windows/Linux user for software developmemt. There's no way I would ever go back. My 2015 Air is rock solid, never any problems despite being used 8-12 hours per day and you get Unix underneath. Just bought a new Air so I can have a backup machine.

Dang I'm the total opposite. 1 round in the Apple ecosystem and I'd never touch their products again.

I can't understand the appeal outside the marketing gimmicks.

It sounds like a number of things p*ed you off, but what was your biggest gripe with the Apple stuff? Or perhaps it was everything (!).

I'm in a similar position and I can answer for my situation. I bought iPad 3 back in 2012 I think. I liked it a lot and I bought iPhone 4S which I liked even more (until they released iOS 7 but that's theme for another rant). After that I understood that I love Apple approach and decided to buy a Macbook as I wanted to write some apps and also needed new laptop at that time. I bought Retina Macbook Pro 15" mid 2012.

Well, it was worst laptop I ever saw. Software was good, I still love it. SSD broke in the second month, so I took it to repair and it was in repair for another month until replacement SSD arrived. Thankfully it was covered by warranty and that's the only good thing about this situation. I used it for 2 years and then it just started to tear apart.

Charger cable failed. I bought new at aliexpress, tried to replace it and almost caused a fire, so I had to buy a new charger which costs like a cheap laptop LoL.

Keyboard failed. Right now half of keys just do not work, another half of keys work if pressed hard enough. And I did not spill anything there, they just don't register presses. I'm using USB keyboard to work on it.

Audio port failed. There's some switch there to detect optical cable or something like that. That switch is stuck, so red laser always lighting out of there and macOS thinks that I inserted a headphones, so speakers do not work. And headphones do not work either. I'm using USB headphones if I need sound.

It sometimes panics. I think that something's wrong with GPU. It's Nvidia GPU and I've read that it was poorly soldered. Not sure.

Its battery almost dead, it can live for a 10 minutes of low-power usage. Of course I can't replace a battery, because it's glued.

Even on charger it gets hot on load pretty quickly and then it starts to throttle. Its CPU going lower than 1GHz. And system becomes very laggy, everything slow as hell. Its cooling just terrible. Sure, it's a laptop, but I never experienced such a slowdown with other laptops. I was very disappointed with Apple engineering.

I've used few laptops in my life. Not a single one of them caused so many issues. Not a single one of them had faulty charger cable. All of them have easily replaceable battery.

Also in my country I'm paying heavy Apple tax, Apple devices typically cost 30-50% more than in US, but other manufacturers have more sane prices, so I would have to pay much more extra.

I went back to Windows and I'm pretty happy. I never liked Windows, but since Windows 10 it's actually good OS that works much more stable than macOS and have all the software I need.

My last hope was Mac Pro. But its price is just absurd, so that hope is vanished. Basically Apple does not make any computer that I would want to buy, all computers are antithetical to my needs. I want something that's reliable, bulky, powerful and repairable. Preferably a PC, as I don't really need a laptop. And they focus on the opposite properties. So while I loved macOS, there's nothing to run it on.

I'm thinking about hackintosh and probably will build my next computer considering it (can run Windows anywhere, so can select hackinosh-friendly parts anyway). But it seems that hackintosh in the future might be doomed (more proprietary hardware, may be even ARM migration), so probably that won't be a way to go either.

What funny is that I'm in a similar position regarding phones. I hate large screen phones and with discontinuing iPhone SE 1 Apple stopped producing the only phone that I'd want to buy. I'm using iPhone 8 now, but I don't like it and thinking about buying SE 1 instead. Too bad that Androids don't have any phones for me either, so it's more about phone industry rather than just Apple.

Thank you for taking time to write a detailed response.

Yeah, secretly I hope that some guy from Apple will read similar responses and will decide to release Mac Mini Pro or something like that, so I can just put good GPU there, put it on my desk, configure it with some entry Xeon CPU and ECC RAM and that's for $2-3k. And if something breaks or just in the future when I would want upgrades, I could just buy some Samsung SSD, put it there and enjoy improved performance, rather than spending all the money again for slightly bumped specs. Just an ordinary workstation computer with macOS support and reasonable price, nothing extra-ordinary.

iPhone was just slow with apps and annoying with sign in and update requests. This was annoying.

And they lacked features I was used to. I hear they finally got widgets, so that I suppose is solved.

Could not agree more with this. I'd sooner buy an "ancient" secondhand MacBook Air than use Windows or attempt to use Linux on a laptop.

I find the the touch bar obviously annoying, but that annoyance is so minor compared with the annoyances of Windows or running Linux on a laptop. Honestly it seems like a lot of people have quite the double standard when it comes to Apple products.

This is also coming from someone who was forced to use Windows professionally for several years (worked on CAD software).

I've had very good experiences with Linux on my laptop. Definitely more stable than windows, literally never had to fiddle with kernel modules or any sort of hardware support. Battery life is actually better than in windows.

You have to be a bit careful with the hardware, especially non Intel wifi/Bluetooth seems not well supported. And Nvidia graphics are a bit risky, but of the alternative is a MacBook that shouldn't matter as much

I've heard this a lot over the years, but it's never held up to scrutiny.

Usually there's a lot of manual config, driver issues, shitty hardware support, screen resolution issues, bad battery life, laptop suspend issues, terrible trackpad support, connecting to external monitor issues, etc.

I've had the best luck with Thinkpads and I still like Linux and have fun with this kind of thing, but it's not even close to macOS and I don't think it's really close to Windows either.

My issue with desktop/laptop Linux has always been the quality of the GUI-based software.

While I appreciate that people put in tons of time and effort to make these things available for free, I’d rather pay for something better, and on Linux I usually can’t.

As an example, our dev machines at the office run Linux, and it’s a great platform for the majority of the work we do. But I have to keep a Windows VM around for Office, because I can’t trust that LibreOffice isn’t going to completely mangle a file that I need to send to a client.

If you're fine paying a consistent 600 tax, just make the leap and give a reasonable xps machine running linux another chance.

My work machine is a 13" macbook pro on Catalina, my personal project machine is a 15" dell xps from 2017.

Of the two, I'm delighted by the XPS running Arch/Gnome/Wayland.

I'm much, MUCH less delighted by the Catalina crap box.

> I still miss mag-safe adapters though. I still don't understand that decision.

With any luck the mag-safe connector will be back in a couple of years. Of course Apple will call it "new".

If you care about it, just buy a magnetic USB-C dongle: https://www.amazon.com/usb-c-magsafe/s?k=usb+c+magsafe

Returning to magsafe would be a downgrade when you can just magsafe-ify any of the ports yourself with a cheap adapter.

Not an entirely bad idea, however I t should be obvious that having an adapter hanging out the side of ya laptop is less than ideal.

Well, I think it's a superior solution to having a special magsafe port when you can have more USB-C ports with the option to add magsafe to them.

Apple has lost me as a customer for their computers. The software has been getting flakier for years, the butterfly fiasco, and their inexplicable decision to continue shipping laptops missing 15% of the keyboard. I'm on a System 76 Darter Pro now. Pop OS has been fantastic. Great specs for the money, and while it certainly isn't Mac-level hardware, it's fine. At this point, the Darter has a far superior keyboard, even comparing to the newest MBP keyboards.

I still need a Mac for my music and photo collection, and to sync my phone. But since my 2015 MBP is dying, I'm in the market for a used Mac Mini.

Apple still has me as a customer, when it comes to work solutions. I have to use windows at home for gaming, no way around it.

MacOS vs Windows 10 is a MUCH lesser difference than MacOS vs Windows 8 and below. If Apple doesn't put more focus into their computers over the next 5 years the tide may truly turn.

Also before someone mentions Linux, I really love linux. I used linux out of NEED in college but I find myself maintaining it too much for it to be worth it vs MacOS when it comes to work. I have access to linux servers for running most of my code anyway so perhaps I'm a special user.

Has to be fanless and new SSD or HDD, or you are buying trouble just to avoid setting up Plex or something.

The other important differentiator is the OS. I can’t (reliably) get MacOS on a Dell laptop so my choice is clear: either keep using the MBP I have or upgrade. At this point I don’t want to go back and try re-learning Windows.

The real news is that you can get 32gb RAM and 4TB SSD in a 13-inch form factor

Sometimes its not really about the price, its about "can you?".

I'm glad Apple (and Dell) is addressing the market, alongside the improvements in the technology in their supply chain.

There have definitely been some years where I have been pretty sure something was possible but everyone was holding out for another year because a processor came out too late, or some totally antitrust violating agreement, or milking consumers, all while we just had to assume there were some quality control or battery life issue.

I am glad to know this is going to be generally available.

The macbook still electrocutes you when it's plugged in since the grounding is all fucked up.

This is still a problem: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3969131

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-pro-giving-me-e...

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/10545/is-it-bad-th...

Every Apple device I've owned has done this (iPad, iPhone, MacBook) :/

According to the forum posts, it's happening to everyone who uses the default plug, the extension that comes with a 3 pin plug resolves the issue.

I have one short and one long cable, and am only just now realizing the issue. I'd simply assumed the short one was a fake I'd gotten.

Can't speak to why your iPhone and iPad do the same thing, I've experienced it when using sketchy cheap lightning cables or wall adapters (including ghost touching), but not when using better built stuff (like AmazonBasics or Anker).

That's assuming that your house have grounded sockets. My house does not and most of old houses in my country are the same, only new houses have ground.

That's some... creative usage of the verb "electrocute", which implies death.

That said, I did feel the electric current when the 2012MBP was not grounded, but the 2017 model does not have the same problem.

When people tell me they were electrocuted I say, "oh, so you died?"

Language changes and evolves over time, this is normal and natural. Just because "elecrocuted" at one time only meant died from electricity, it doesn't mean it can't mean now that one simply got a jolt and didn't die.

Or do you still think "Google" just means a big number? Do you "literally" means "exactly" or can also be used to show strong feeling or emphasis.

I know, I do it to be cheeky.

Google doesn't mean big number, do you mean googol?

More specifically, you're using the non-grounded plug rather than a grounded one. Since the laptop is metal, it passes it to you and to the ground instead of through the dedicated circuit.

>More specifically, you're using the non-grounded plug rather than a grounded one

Yes, the one that comes with extremely expensive European 2019 16" Macbook Pro is not grounded.

I'm not sure they sell the grounded lead anymore. But maybe I should charge my work macbook with my personal xps 13 charger which is grounded (yay usb-c!)

I hate that so much. Physical punishment for using a laptop.

Not in EU with a grounded plug.

>This is still a problem:

The three posts you provided are from 2012, 2013, and 2011. So is it really still a problem?

I still feel minor electric shocks with my 2016 MBP if I charge it with my ThinkPad power plug and touch the chassis.

Are you in Europe perchance? I have a feeling that wiring in the EU is more prone to sparks than in the US, so maybe grounding behaves differently as well, due to some sort of variation in building and wiring codes.

No, live in the US.

Dell:

* Much higher resolution screen (3840x2400 vs 2560x1600)

* Smaller and lighter (not by much though) and thinner bezels

* Better hardware support (apple hardware has bad support under anything but macOS and I can't think of any hardware which is supported under mac but not on windows).

> apple hardware has bad support under anything but macOS and I can't think of any hardware which is supported under mac but not on windows

I had to read this a few times. You mean third-party hardware and peripherals, right? I first read it as running Windows on Mac hardware, which Bootcamp supports. Linux usually lags a few years and often isn't solid. Battery life usually isn't as good.

Paradoxical to your peripheral experience, I often much prefer macOS' experience to Windows with things like mice and printers since they often use standard, builtin tools instead of requiring third-party drivers with terrible UIs. For most things in the past 10-15+ years they support both Mac/Windows.

One pro Windows laptops usually have over Mac is the Mac webcams have the same quality from their laptops over a decade ago. Cameras are something Apple used to brag about (both including them standard and the quality of them).

>IMHO I think the Touch Bar disappointment is probably over dramatized by developers, it's not too bad a couple years in

The touch bar still sucks, but eventually all design decisions Apple makes are justified by users.

They literally just changed the keyboard design because users hated it.

They changed it because on 50% of all machines (stats from our office) the keyboard went bad within a year, causing massive warranty cost for Apple.

I haven't had a Dell in awhile, 4+ years, but I have to say, the Macs that I've had felt just as sturdy as the day I bought it. My personal MBP I got is from early 2017, and my new MBP I got for work less than a year ago feel exactly the same, besides one having stickers I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Every dell I've had starts creaking at the hinges after just a few uses. Doesn't feel as sturdy, the $600 difference is worth the longevity and integrity of the macbook hardware alone.

> A $600 price difference for this machine is probably worth it in my mind.

Agreed. Recently bought the 16 inch MBP after considering Lenovo and Dell. Prices between the machines weren't that much different (Lenovo came to 7200 minus some discount to bring it down to MBP price).

End of the day I didn't want to deal with Linux drivers (no M$ for me) and I wanted something that worked. Plus, the touchpad on an Apple device can't be beat. It's not a perfect machine, mainly Catalina issues I suspect, but worth it IMO.

The XPS13 optionally comes with Ubuntu preinstalled. Haven't had to fight drivers in a while (on my second XPS 13).

ya, but limited hardware IIRC. Considered it.

> Better Trackpad

After using the Dell for a month and finally sending it back, I can tell you that this was the deal breaker for me.

If Apple made a 13 inch MBP without touchbar but with 4 ports I’d buy 3 because I know they’d immediately discontinue or “improve” it.

Apple should simply re-release the pre-touchbar 2013 Macbook Pro, with USB-C ports.

"Peak MacBook Pro" was 2013 (once they fixed the screen-coating deterioration).

Let's talk 2013 vs 2015 :D

Back then, Apple hardware only differentiated in hard disk spaces for the different prices and provided equal experience to users and now their lineup is such a mess and if you want 4 ports, you have to take 512GB space which is typically way too big and no clear distinction between Air and Pro but more like Pro is Air + all sorts of random options.

Sadly, Jobs' vision is fading out.

The xps is a plastic laptop with a plastic hinged small trackpad. The mbp trackpad alone is worth the extra money. I keep a laptop for 4-5 years. It’s not worth interacting thousands of times a day with an outdated subpar input device to save $10 a month.

I’ve been watching the xps closely and the internal stats are good but the “plastic laptop with a small hinged trackpad” aspect of it make it a no go for me at the price point.

Per the specs on the dell website, it's a milled aluminum chassis. Guess that could technically mean there's plastic somewhere, but they seem to be selling the fact it's not plastic.

Through some kind of engineering magic, they've been able to make it out of thin aluminum while still retaining the creaky plastic feeling Dell is known for.

The top shell and the bottom shell are thin aluminum but the rest of the laptop is plastic. The bottom assembly is a plastic body screwed into a thin aluminum shell. Unfortunately I don’t have a link but there are reviews on YouTube where people subject it to the “twist test” and the laptop body creaks and visibly twists under light manual force.

the new macbook pro has 4 thunderbolt ports only if you go for the top-of-the-line model. anything "regular" has two ports like the dell xps 13.

You also "forgot" to mention that the xps 13 is probably easier to fix if anything goes wrong.

Regarding hardware support... what do you mean exactly? If it's warranty, dell is probably as good as apple.

>I will say that even though I prefer the travel of the '12-'15 era keyboards, this typing experience is far superior than the faulty butterfly keys.

I still dont like the new Magic Keyboard travel. It feels to me exactly the same as butterfly. The whole typing experience just sucks. But given a lot of people ( DHH ) are saying it feels the same as Magic Keyboard on the iMac ( Which I will probably never understand ), the likelihood of that ever coming back to the Mac is near Zero. May be even Magic Keyboard on iMac will one day be the same as well.

I wonder if someone will make a plastic keyboard cover that adds back the few mm key travel, along with "artificial" buttons to cover up the Touch Bar.

In case anyone ask why not the MacBook Air, it is because the CPU run up to 90C with passive cooling. I dont know how long will the product last under medium load usage.

>* Better hardware support

What are you basing that on?

This comparison is at the higher end, but I am curious about the $1799 version of the Macbook Pro - with the new 10th Gen processors, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB storage.

Depending on what your needs are, the TouchID and T2 might be pros (or cons). Same thing with macOS, but that might simply be a matter of 'need it' and 'do not need it' and isn't much of a gradient. If you need macOS, you'll buy a Mac and the whole comparison matters a whole lot less.

I'd say - based on my experience w/ work-issued dell's, the Apple keyboard is better. Even the butterfly...the dell keys were prone to falling off (albeit I suppose you could repair them w/o replacing the entire chassis....)

I hope the Mac screen is still better. We bought a couple of Thinkpad T490's on discount. The internals are fine, good processors, battery life, keyboard, but the trackpad sucks and the screen is noticeably still worse than my 2014 MacBook Pro...

> I still miss mag-safe adapters though. I still don't understand that decision.

I really dislike the mag-safe adapter on my 2015 Mac (the first Mac I've ever had). It often feels like you only have to sneeze in the direction of the connector and it pops right off.

I get the problem they're trying to solve, I too don't want to go back to the old style of connector where you could accidentally rip it out of the motherboard. I just want something a little firmer than magsafe.

I'm guessing you have MagSafe2. I only had MagSafe1 laptops and thought they were great. I might be mistaken, but I thought I had heard of Apple tweaking the magnets on different models.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagSafe#MagSafe_2

I believe the Surface have their version of MagSafe and support charging via USB-C...I wish that was the direction Apple went with.

I’m pretty sure Apple is using the latest 4-core 10th Gen CPUs. Unless the Dell is using a 6 core chip, it is unlikely that their CPU is better.

The top end is the Core i7-1068NG7 and the i5 is the Core i5-1038NG7. They are both 28W parts with the highest end integrated GPU that Intel sells.

When I buy a Mac, I don't buy a computer.

I buy an operating system.

In my case, the Apple OS gives me exactly what I need. Apple holds all the cards, and are able to set the price. Wish it was lower, but I am glad the OS works as well as it does. The control that Apple has over both the hardware and software is key to that.

For others, Windows is exactly what they need (I see this a lot with hardware hacker stuff. It's very hard to get Apple versions of a lot of the tools I need). They do have a lot more choices, but I prefer my experience. Well worth the difference in price, for me.

Dell XPS + Linux Mint seems like it would be an incredible development machine. I used to love OS X because everything "just worked" and you still got a real bash environment. I think Linux has caught up in terms of UX. I installed Linux Mint on my desktop recently and Cinnamon is really nice. All the tools I need are there, and I had no drivers issues whatsoever.

I see little reason to continue buying into the Apple ecosystem. I switched from iPhone to an S9+ a couple years back and plan to keep this phone for at least another few years unless it dies.

I think in general people are getting sick of the upgrade cycle. Gadgets are getting good enough that they can last multiple release cycles. I think consumer electronics companies are going to need to find a way to evolve, or they really will be running into the classic "not enough consumers" problem.

I have an xps-13, and it has been pretty unreliable. The first one I got died mysteriously, luckily I was able to exchange it for a working one. After a couple years of occasional use, the screen died (my guess is it was probably just the cable).

I still don't use it unless I need more processing power, preferring to use my 2016 Macbook 12" for everything other than compiling Rust code. The Macbook has held up great, and I even did the infamous glued in battery replacement myself.

I will probably get a Macbook pro in the next few years instead of another non-mac computer.

I think that the MBP actually has the better CPU and the better thermals (the latest XPS is not that great in this regard).

Other than that, I completely agree

I've a macbook pro 13' 2017 - It's the worst laptop I've used in the past 10 years. It continuously gets smoking hot lot of fan noise and very often kernel panics. I have lost faith in apple macbook especially when price to hardware ratio is higher than anyone else in the industry I expect the machine to just work seamlessly. I'm very soon disposing the laptop and buy a dell or a thinkpad. I'm not looking at apple again for a very long time at least for macbooks

I have same model at work and even ignoring the keyboard the thing has been awful to use. The two ports are a complete nightmare making you have to juggle between power/screen and reliable storage (Tried 5 dongles, none can hold a drive reliably under heavy use).

Kernel Panics on waking from sleep almost every day, bluetooth chip crashes and requires restarts to get working again.

Not to mention the disgustingly low storage in the base model that my company thinks is fine makes the thing almost unusable for any semblance of "Professional" work other than being a journalist.

The design doesn't even feel modern and the bezels are janky compared to whats normal now on the windows side. I understand the new model fixes some of this, but they still thought this thing was absolutely fine to ship for several years now speaks volumes to me.

I have the same and it’s making me want to move to a Linux laptop.

With the bluetooth chip, do you get an error when it crashes? Airdrop basically never works on mine and I was wondering if it might be a related problem.

Nope it's completely silent failure, only thing noticeable is I think if I toggle it on and off in the menu a few times it will freeze coming back on. But rebooting fixes it.

But yeah AirDrop wont work in the state so it's likely the same issue because on a long enough uptime the chip crashes without fail.

Don't know if you're aware, but if you click the bluetooth icon in the menu bar with Shift and Option held down, you get a debug menu that lets you reset the bluetooth module - might save you rebooting.

> Tried 5 dongles, none can hold a drive reliably under heavy use

This is something I've had a problem with as well on my late 2016 13" MBP, 2 usb-c port model. I have two external drives that I sync via rsync occasionally (1 local, 1 offsite). No matter what type of dongle I use, one of the disks always ejects shortly after beginning the rsync. Even with the Apple dongle, when I plug in one of the external disks via usb-a, and plug my usb-c power to the dongle, then plug in the 2nd external disk directly to the only other usb-c on the mac, it fails every time.

What I have been doing instead is unplugging the power cord and syncing the disks while running on battery. This seems to work, but the odd thing here is that about 50% of the time when I do this I lose my wifi connection as soon as I begin the rsync from disk to disk. Nothing I can do makes the network work again until after I unmount the external disks.

Having only two ports on the computer, one of which is also used for power, has turned out to be far more annoying than I imagined.

I don't understand why Apple doesn't give more ports. They removed the headphone jack in their phones, everyone else copied them (Samsung after making fun of it for a while). Apple makes repairing their machines hard by soldiering everything, others follow.

I hope other manufacturers don't start removing ports just because Apple does. Really annoying - why not just copy the good stuff from Apple, instead of their arrogant choices...

They already are. My father in law's Microsoft Surface has one fucking USB port.

I'm in the same boat and agree completely. I haven't owned a machine this bad since the last Dell laptop I bought in the early 2000s.

ThinkPad X1 Carbon is my dream I wish I wasn't poor :(

I have one sitting on a closet. It sucks too.

I am honestly astonished at how bad hardware companies are at incrementally improving their products. Every new "improvement" (new CPU) comes with a huge completely-unrelated drawback for no reason (horrible keyboard, touchbar, .......)

The newer ones had heat issues, but my X1 Carbon from ~2017 is amazing and I have not felt any desire to upgrade from it.

I bought a pre-owned one a few years back for $425 on eBay. Except it was clear once I got it that no one had ever used it. If you look, there are a lot of business-class laptops on eBay that have minimal usage.

My Thinkpad is not as fast as the latest and greatest ones, but it's a pretty sweet device and I'm happy with the purchase.

Aside from my 2015 Macbook Pro, I have a Lenovo X230 right next to it running Linux. The older Lenovo Thinkpads are treasures.

Same impression with the 2018 15" MBP. Topcase was replaced twice, and a full exchange for the third repair, all within the first year. The screen is now pressure damaged everywhere... by gently wiping with a damp microfiber cloth? I'm certain it's a manufacturing defect, but I can't seem to find similar complaints anywhere.

I've been buying Macs for 20+ years, let's be honest... I'm not rage quitting and moving platforms. The productivity hit would be too much. So now the game becomes: waiting until the next full redesign to see if they fixed everything. The 2015 era was great.

For anyone on the fence, avoid all of these.

Still on a early 2015 13" Mac Book Pro because I have hated everything they have done since then. I even bought one with a touch bar but found it so annoying and I hated the keyboard so I returned it and stuck with my old laptop. At least they fixed the keyboard now, but the touch bar I still don't want.

It's exemplary of how out-of-touch Apple has become. Most people either vocally dislike the Touch Bar, or don't care about it, because it offers such little value to overcome the real world inconvenience.

Same with external displays. People have wanted standalone retina displays for what, 5 years? Then 4 years later, we get a $5,000 display made only for a single market. All anyone wanted was the iMac sans computer.

Just, like... why? I don't understand their product choices. On any level.

> $5,000 display

Ahh yeah the display that when you criticize the price people cried it was a great deal because it was up to spec with $30,000 screens. Then when tested it can't actually function where you would use one of those because it's not quite up to spec you get told "What do you expect? It's $5000 not $30,000"

So what do we have? Just an overpriced screen that can't be used for the professional work it was claimed to be for for YouTuber tech reviewers to show off with.

Same issue for me with the screen. It's been meticulously cared for and only ever wiped with a clean damp microfibre and there's small micro scratches, as well as marks from what I assume is it resting on the keys whilst closed. I could tolerate such issues with the old models safe in the knowledge that a replacement glass was fairly cheap - not the case anymore.

And then there's the degradation of reliability software wise. Way more regular crashes, bugs etc. Dodgy Bluetooth issues, WiFi issues, a bricked iMac after a software update, and way more (including the MacBook keyboard issue, which I'll need repairing).

And the support. I've had good experiences with Apple in the past, but a recent issue with my iMac has led to it being repaired twice, and still it's broken. I've been dealing with this since January. I've experienced faulty diagnoses, lies about consumer law rights for replacement (which they've since confirmed was incorrect on multiple occasions), they forgot to put my RAM back in, they scratched my screen, and now it clearly hasn't been assembled correctly as the speaker causes something to reverberate in the case, as if a screw's lose. My most recent interaction with a senior support advisor was the most awful of my life, and I've never dealt with such a confrontational customer support person. After finally getting a replacement machine authorised (for the second time in 2 weeks), it's been cancelled a further 2 times for "unknown reasons", leading to more delays. It's been a real nightmare.

Purely anecdotal of course, but I've had that many negative experiences with my Mac's in general recently, both hardware and software, that I feel it is not coincidental. The MacBook and Mac lineup in general is moving towards being too expensive for the joy and stability it gives me, and I'm very close to moving back to Linux after what has up until relatively recently been a very positive experience for almost a decade for me.

I really hope that the new keyboards are a sign of better things to come, but I'm not holding my breath.

Interesting to see your screen issue.

Mine in particular: bright white splotches. There are 12 of them at random locations. I get a new one every couple of months.

If you were to press your fingernail forcefully into the LCD, to purposely damage it, that's what it looks like. But I obviously don't do that... gentle circular patterns with a clean eyeglasses cloth, dampened with water.

In regard to the display: Yes, those marks come from the keys pressing against the display. Be careful how much you fill in your backpack with the MBP. My display looks very bad around the space bar (that is the 2018 "improved display"). Noticed that way too late. An Apple Genius recommended me to always have a microfiber cloth between display and keyboard when traveling. Not on a $3000 device thanks.

Heating/fan issues, double typing keys, too many "-gates" to count. I never had so much buyers regret.

Same issues here with a basically maxed-out MacBook Pro 15" 2018. Worst laptop I've ever owned.

Sadly I feel pretty invested in Mac OS as an operating system.

Same problem here on the damn late 2019 MacBook Pro I was issued at work – and now I'm stuck with it for 3+ years. Sigh.

Lots of piling on the hate, but I will add my own experience - no problems here with 2018 15” MacBook Pro at work. No keys have broken, though I know that is common, glad they’ve fixed it. Never kernel panicked, though my old 2012 MacBook Air used to occasionally, that’s still the only time I’ve seen the Apple gray screen of death. Doesn’t run particularly louder or hotter than I’d expect, if the fans are blasting it’s generally because the cpu is actually being maxed out, sometimes because I’m compiling something and sometimes because I’ve clicked a link to an average news article in chrome, but that’s a different problem and not the hardware's fault.

Overall, for me there's been no big dramatic declines from the laptops of yore in terms of day to day productivity and reliability.

My work machine is a 15" MBP and I dislike it for similar reasons. The design is just totally unsuccessful at managing the heat generated by its components.

On the other hand, my personal laptop is an Air (2019, I think) and I have no such complaints—it's very stable and only heats up when I'm putting it under heavy (relative to its power) load. It also lacks the execrable Touch Bar.

I would guess that Apple's drive toward replacing Intel's processors with their own has a lot to do with heat. Will be interesting to see how that goes, but for now it seems like their reach exceeds their grasp.

Yeah - I've a MPB 15" 2017 and it is also the worst laptop I've ever owned. And it was to replace the MBP that was recalled (long after Apple had denied to me there was any problem and I'd sold it for parts on eBay). Nothing works on this machine! Bits literally fall off! I've got Applecare so the (horrible) keyboard has been replaced, the motherboard, the screen - on and on and on. Laptop of Theseus. I think it's compounded by how it's a MAJOR hassle to get things fixed. They can't even tell you how long it will take (except that it's weeks and there's no courtesy machine, pick up, or indeed anything remotely resembling customer service). I had to make four cross-county train trips to get it fixed last time. You basically have to buy 2 laptops and switch them out.

I've put off buying a new MBP because I just cannot face putting down three grand for something that probably will be even worse than this piece of junk.

I've had an Apple computer since I was 8 years old. I thought I was pretty much in for life but as soon as I can jump ship, I will. :(

I have the same model and mine is also riddled with problems, and I have trouble finding stable work arounds for.

With older laptops (PC or mac) if enough parts break I could either go remote headless server or tee-pee it on the ground with an attached and pretend it's a desktop.

Every part of the MBP has some sort of problem so nothing works. I just have to deal with something eventually failing after an hour or so of use.

I still can't get over the part where multiple keys just fell right off the keyboard. And you can't put them back on - the whole top case has to be replaced.

Sometimes you get a lemon - that's one thing, but this is a whole generation of machines. That seems new... Well, saying that: I had a 2006 iBook - the black one - and the battery ran so hot I still have the scar on my thigh (geek trophy!). Apple denied there was an issue with that machine, too, and the recall came way too late. So I guess it's a pattern and not a new thing, really.

Maybe the new thing is that I am actually genuinely tempted by the Surface. In 2006 there were no contenders.

I also have a 13" from 2018. No issues with it, keyboard works fine and used daily, having a shitty no name 40 Euro 9 USB port dongle, no errors, maybe 3 reboots in all this time. Love it for the portability and somehow like the keyboard. I also have a 16" at home, more powerful, love the screen on it, might seem weird, but I'm not sure which keyboard I like more at this point, I kind of got used with the butterfly. The only issue I had and it's a bit frustrating is with the sound since upgrading to Catalina, after a while it goes wild and connects and reconnects the sound device, especially with headphones.

As a long time user of a Dell XPS, I would never go back to that (poor bluetooth and WiFi support after 2-3 years, battery sucks after a while).

I hope your MBP remains that way. I have a 13” 2018 MBP myself and felt similarly up until a week ago.

After evading all the issues that have plagued the butterfly-switched keyboards, I started seeing my “e” key repeating itself every so often.

I made the relevant changes in settings to minimize this, but I’m now seeing occasional repeats on both the “e” key and the “i” key (maybe once every 30 presses). Livable, but it worries me.

I think I’m going to look into their keyboard repair program later today

Yeah the butterfly keyboard works absolutely fine, until it doesn't. Then one day your keys have dead zones, repeat or are unresponsive and all it takes is one dust particle.

This isn't a case where some are faulty some are fine it's a fundamental flaw in the design of the mechanism and it will happen to your laptop some day we know this because it was grandfathered into the replacement scheme.

I have the same one from work and I was wondering why it feels so much slower than my old 2015 15" and its because it has two CPU cores. I have no idea how they can pass this off as a Professional laptop.

I still find it interesting that IT professionals are such "i-Sheeps". I mean Apple software is awesome, macOS, useful functions of Preview like adding a signature or notes to pdf, many other apps are polished and feel nice - but does it really give you an actual production improvements? I doubt it.

And HW is sooo bad in contrast. It looks like a toy. Overheating, it's either too hot (so some had to drill holes at the bottom), or cold to touch if powered off, pain to use due to bad ergonomics, hard corners, stupid ideas like touchbar, too tiny key travel, no upgradabity (RAM soldered), battery glued. Many decisions made just for the "keynote marketing show", to make it thinner again, one or two ports because wireless revution (like XDR monitors over WiFi?!). Overpriced slow and throttling CPU, every model looks almost the same, aluminium casing easy to bend, scratch, make dents.

Are you really purchasing those overpriced SSDs direct from Apple? Do you know you can easily buy and replace SSD? I even replaced the screen on my HP Elitebook G6 easily to get better sRGB coverage.

And then I see people saying "you can get used to it". Get used to dongles and lack of ports. Really, why would I need to get used to some bad design decisions on such an expensive machine, doesn't make sense to me.

Maybe they like CMD+C shortcut in the terminal. Ok... But something like that is possible on Linux too with Autokey and two lines of Python code to detect a terminal window (I use it myself). And I guess similar hotkey app can be set up on Windows.

I am sorry but I can't help myself. I see Macbooks more like a fashion item for not very technical people than the professional hardware.

Funny anecdote: Apple offers a trade-in when buying a new Macbook. I decided to have a look.

I entered the serial number of my Macbook Air 11" (Late 2010). I confirmed that it boots up, has no defects, has no optical faults and that I will include the power supply.

Apple offered 10€ ($12).

Yay?!

PS: This ancient notebook runs macOS High Sierra with the current 2020-2 security patch and sells for an astonishing 200€ on eBay.

I have the same machine, which served as my ultra-portable unit until say...2018. Now it's gathering dust.

It's just too slow now. Even browing web pages is unbearably slow. I wish it wasn't because I love the 11" form factor. If Apple were to offer something in that size again, I'd buy it.

Most trade-in or authorized reseller values they'll give is 70-80% below what you'd get private party. I usually sell my laptop at a 30-50% discount to a friend, or get a little more value selling it on Craigslist. The nice thing about Macs is even at 5 or 10 years old, there's a market for used Macs.

You’ll always get a better resale value by selling it yourself versus going through Apple.

The difference will be down to convenience for many people and potentially the lower upfront cost of purchase if you haven’t sold the previous device yet.

I got a brand new one evaled for free disposal. That was really generous of Apple.

"You're welcome"

This is my favourite.

Don't we (Canada/Ontario) already pay an e-waste fee on purchase?

Or the condescending "Trade in your computer" text. "First, tell us what brand: Apple? Other?"

If you select "Other", the immediate next text you see is "based on what you told us, your computer is ready for recycling".

Note: Apple is not forced to offer any trade in service, let alone for third party computers. But the above is insulting, if not outright misleading. Doesn't matter what your other computer is, "it's ready for the trash heap (recycling, but still), has no trade-in value".

I tried with my 2015 MBP, and was offered £180 by Apple. The average eBay price for the same model seems to be around £450, so the eBay route would be worth the risk for me.

Also, when selling second hand, at least I know it's being reused not just recycled.

The average eBay price for the same model seems to be around £450

Sale price, or asking price?

The average fleaBay asking price for a TRS-80 Model 100 is $1,200. But the actual average selling price is closer to $100.

This was auction listings ending within the next 12 hours that had bids, for the same spec as mine.

I also found CeX (a buy/sell company) are paying £350 for my spec, which is less risky (and no eBay/PayPal fees).

Mid 2012 500gb Macbook Pro 13" (Mojave) here, $90! I think I'll experiment with it more instead of trading it in.

It probably actually costs them money, when all is done, to take that machine and get rid of it in a reasonably responsible way.

Perhaps, but it reduces the size of the secondary market so consumers have less choice and may opt for a new one instead. This is the real advantage to Apple.

Exactly. Same reason why they offer free engravings.

Is there a secondary market for a ten-year-old MacBook Air?

I use a nine-year-old Air almost daily, but I don't think the vast majority of people would consider it viable, let alone pay for one.

Ebay shows a load being sold for between £70 and £120. Here's one that has actual bids on it. (£106 when I post this comment). https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Apple-MacBook-Air-13-inch-Late-20...

The silver lining of the "Apple Tax" is that machines retain value for an absurdly long time, even those which are verging on "obsolete".

It's certainly to the same type of people who would buy a new product for 5x the price instead.

If it can install latest macOS, it's a good test machine to test the newest OS to see if it sucks or not.

There's no meaningful competition between new Apple products and ten-year-old Apple products.

But if you want to talk about much newer machines, Apple doesn't offer good trade-in prices, so it still doesn't look like they are trying to beat out the secondary market.

I think it's pretty clear the trade-in offers are a convenience they can provide more than anything.

I was a regular contributor to a Brazilian Mac magazine. The tradition on the mailing list was that, for any offer of anything Apple for sale, we'd offer $50.

The 11" carry a particular premium in the second-hand market because there's almost nothing in that size / weight available anymore.

The HP Dragonfly is the closest new equivalent I can find, and it's super expensive.

Also discontinued, but the 12" MacBook is smaller and lighter than the 11" MBA, with a bigger/higher-res screen.

Like most trade in programs, Apple’s trade in program is for their financial benefit on both ends of the deal, kind of like trading in a car at a dealership.

I tried with my current MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2018). Apple offered 240€. Well.

Pretty sure its mainly just recycling service. It's for people that have no interest in attempting to deal with the hassle of reselling.

And repair parts inventory, I'm sure.

I bet you can get at least double on eBay!

Jokes aside, for those old computers, selling on eBay is way better than trade-in programs. There are collectors out there that might need this to complete their macbook shrine, and others who that want a mac but can't afford a new one.

You'll have the same experience with CarMax if you try to trade in a vehicle that is too old, even if it is in perfect condition. It's not worth their time, but they want to be able to say they accept all trade-ins. So they offer you a flat $200 and wholesale the car for parts or scrap.

I will pay you $13 just for the power supply, if not frayed. Throw in the MacBook and I might go up to $18, a 50% premium!

This is silly. I guess the transaction cost is eating up most of the cash.

It looks like the frustrations just add up when you look at different factors.

In this lineup, the first two models are the 8th generation processors whereas the top model (starting at $1799) is the one with the latest 10th generation processors (but that still comes with a stingy 512GB SSD).

Another thing is that SSD storage on Apple Macs is expensive, and they can no longer be upgraded after purchase (since they have the T2 chip and are soldered on to the logic board). This would be kinda ok to put up with just for the combination of hardware and software, but poorly designed software makes the experience worse. Photos and videos take up a lot of space, and Apple's default app, Photos really sucks. You can't move the photos library to an external (cheaper hard) drive and live peacefully. If you do, then you might find yourself unable to eject said drive because there are background processes that launch themselves and keep your photos library in use even if nothing has changed and even when you've let them run for a day or a few days before to finish). Apple seems to be doing a terrible job on the software front (I don't even want to talk about other issues in Catalina). Is there any other alternative for photos on Mac that works well and can also import photos and videos from iOS devices (on to an external drive)?

Image Capture, included with OSX.

I've tested Resilio Sync on my iOS devices and SyncThing on my Android devices to get my photos and videos to my home NAS. PhotoStructure (running in a docker image, but there are other ways to install it) then imports the new files and shows them in my library.

(Disclaimer: I'm the author of PhotoStructure, details in my profile)

Correction from the original post: I've tested Resilio on iOS and Android. SyncThing doesn't have an iOS port.

How are you running Syncthing on iOS?

You're correct, I've only tested it on Android. I edited the post to clarify.

"the first two models are the 8th generation processors whereas the top model (starting at $1799) is the one with the latest 10th generation processors"

I had to double-check this wasn't a typo.

> In this lineup, the first two models are the 8th generation processors

Anyone knows which processors?

A little disappointed it’s not the rumoured 14” model as I’ve been looking to replace both my 15” and 13” MacBooks.

Also, regarding other comments on “just” the 4 core CPU - it’s probably all they could squeeze in without having to redesign the chassis/thermal design. I’m going to hold off for a tear down to see if they have improved the cooling system like they did (Or claimed to) with the 16” version.

The 14" was just that, a rumor. MKHD had an interview with Phil S. and he said they were not coming out with a 14" point blank.

Yeah. But coming from a marketing executive like Phil, this kind of "not coming out with it" doesn't mean "never." It means "not coming out with it this next upcoming version." I think the rumor will stay alive.

I’ve always found the 13” Pros to be the “worst of both worlds” compromise. You don’t get the svelte lightness of the Air, or the generous desktop or raw power of the big boy. Whatever your priority is, it’s just not there. A 14” screen would have at least differentiated the product.

I think a lot of these are bought by corporate bean counters and people who assume that Airs must be awful if they’re the most affordable.

(Yes, I’ve used them, my current “burner” is a ‘17 escape key model)

Having used a '15 (I think) 13" Pro for two internships, I actually found it met my needs really well. I personally can't stand any 14"+ laptop, so the 13" Pro hit a great spot for me of being:

* Svelte enough to watch Netflix in bed with or throw in my bag to take on a commute

* Powerful enough that I never had major performance issues when plugged in at my desk at work, driving an external monitor

I look back on that machine and those internships fondly, and I could see myself going for a 13" MBP (or 14", if they ever release it) when I next need to upgrade my laptop - after I finish undergrad :)

right, but have you used the Air? It's much nicer for similar performance.

I have owned two Airs. Macbook Pros are so thin and light these days that I don't understand what Air brings to the table anymore. I mean, a 13" Macbook Pro is 3 lbs.

Ideally Macbook Pros would be thicker and heavier for better thermals and performance, and then Airs would have a purpose again.

We are talking about a 3.1 lb MBP versus a 2.8 lb MBA with basically the same dimensions. In addition, the Air has a dimmer screen, fewer ports, inferior display color space, and from what I've read, inferior thermal headroom. The two things the MBA has going for itself is better price and price to performance ratio. It also has a longer battery, but the gap is thinner than it once was (11 hours vs 10 hours).

I'm still using a 2014 13'' MBP as my secondary machine and for web dev it's fine. It would be great if it was a bit faster, but being a 6 year old machine I'm surprised it's still so usable.

For me the 13'' is the perfect balance between mobility and performance. At least for web dev, obviously not for video editing or gaming.

I also love my 2014 13" Pro and have been desperately waiting for them to add the 32GB RAM option and physical esc key to upgrade. I think GP underestimates how many people find the 13" Pro to be the perfect sweet spot to balance power with portability.

> You don’t get the svelte lightness of the Air

The Pro is barely any thicker and barely any heavier.

An advantage of the 13” is the lack of discrete GPU.

If you don’t need one, you won’t have to care about tweaking for power consumption (like adding utilities to force disable it) and your laptop will be less likely to take off like a jet engine.

I had to take the 15” to get the 32G RAM on the previous iteration, and it made me wish I could have had a 13” option at that time.

The Air is not smaller nor thinner than the Pro, it just weights a bit less. On the other hand performance and thermals are just a joke

I would have got rid of my i9 15” to get a 14”. Maybe Apple doesn’t want to cannibalize their forced 15” purchases.

I decided to switch back to the (new) MacBook Air instead. I feel that had the butterfly fiasco never happened, this generation of laptops may have just dumped the Touch Bar entirely, but instead, there were so many general keyboard complaints (escape key specifically, general Touch Bar complaints, and of course the butterfly keyboard complaints), that it is reasonable that they are trying to see if this new "reduced" Touch Bar will stick, but it's just not for me. I feel that the fact that the Touch Bar has not made its way into any other keyboard (desktop keyboards or even iPad keyboards), is somewhat of an admission that it's not that crucial.

It's a really weird feeling, because on the Air the keyboard has once again returned to just being something I don't think about. I'm not ecstatic or something. Just overnight I stopped getting infuriated at my machine and feeling like a complete idiot when I'd see an email where I sent "butt" instead of "but" due to repeated keys. But it's like fixing a dead pixel, my experience is not amazing now, it's just not an issue anymore.

The problem I've always had with the Touch Bar is that I'd lightly brush some random button and all of sudden I would have triggered some action. When I first got a Touch Bar MacBook Pro, I could swear we had some weird state-resetting bug in our website. Turned out, I would just every so often accidentally hit the refresh button on the Touch Bar. Do "normal people" ever refresh a website? I feel that refresh has basically become a pro-level feature now for development. Anyways, I ended up just manually removing just about every button from the Touch Bar.

So, back to where we were 3 years ago as far as I'm concerned (on the Air).

> I feel that the fact that the Touch Bar has not made its way into any other keyboard (desktop keyboards or even iPad keyboards), is somewhat of an admission that it's not that crucial

It's worth noting that the Touch Bar is driven by an entirely separate processor that also handles Touch ID and some other security stuff, so porting it to an external accessory is probably nontrivial.

The Touch Bar feels to me like a stopgap measure from Apple because they don't yet have touch-sensitive screens on their laptops. Eventually Apple will have to put touch-sensitive screens on their laptops -- just like everybody else does -- and on that day the Touch Bar will be history.

I know Apple doesn't think touch-sensitive screens on laptops are a good idea. I would have agreed with them 5 years ago. But every time I have to show my MBP screen to a colleague who's not an Apple user, they try to scroll the window by touching the screen with their finger. Every time. Apple is out of step with the world on this issue.

I dont think that is a good enough reason to add touch screen. Do you have a better reason for adding one?

One of the reasons for me to keep using a Mac has been not having a touch screen. It has become very difficult to find non-Mac laptops without a touch screen now. I for one hope they never add it.

Personally I don't care. I already have a Dell XPS running Ubuntu and I never use the touch screen even though it has one. I just think the non-hacker marketplace has come to expect all screens to be touchable.

> Do "normal people" ever refresh a website?

College football fans on national signing day.

I'm considering switching to the Air as well. How have the first impressions been? I'm somewhat worried about using an Air for development performance-wise.

For me the big factors are that I actually use functions keys (in Emacs, mostly) and just cost. My previous Macbook Pro (2011), which is in its death throes, at the time a top-of-the-line 13", was $1200. With aftermarket 8 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD, I managed to keep it usable for almost a decade. At the current MBP configurations, I'd almost certainly end up shelling out a mind-blowing 3-4x that much.

This gives me pause for three reasons:

- All of the soldered on crap means that I can't use aftermarket upgrades to extend the life

- It sounds like an ARM switch is in the cards in the next 1-2 years

- I just don't like having a $3000-5000 portable device. I have my laptop out with me quite often, and I don't relish the idea of having something worth > $4000 with me that may get lost or stolen.

So I am going to have an unsatisfactory answer, but maybe its helpful:

1. Performance was kind of a reason for the Air. I want a machine that gives me the perspective my users will have when using my software. 2. But doesn't that suck for actually building? Yes except... I also just have a nice computer on the network that I offload the actual rough tasks to. This might end up being a good solution for you too. 3. This might also future-proof you for the ARM switch. If you have a good build computer, and a cheap "interface" computer, you can switch to a new ARM computer in a bit with little pain: none of the the "real" stuff has to change.

It kinda sucks for multi-monitor though. It really struggles with it.

I naively picked up a late 2018 air without considering the thermal aspects of the performance. It sounds obvious but I totally missed it and bought on basis of the benchmark numbers, make sure to look at the thermal performance under sustained loads. Notebookcheck do a good job at deep diving on this in their review https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-2018-i5-256-....

It's basically passively cooled! There's no heatpipe connecting the fan to the CPU so it kicks up to max all the time trying to cool it but can't make much of a dent on the temp. Really mind boggling.

I had to switch back to my old pro machine and felt like a bit of a berk for not reading up on that aspect.

Very interesting. I had assumed I'd buy a 13" Pro as a personal laptop replacement for my 2011 Air when they updated the keyboard.

However, when the 2020 Air dropped, I snapped one up because it ticked all the boxes, and I really don't need the "power" of the Pro, especially given its presumed expense.

I bought a loaded Air with 512gb which was I think $1650.

Speccing out the Pro, the pricepoint for a similar machine is actually $1600; $50 cheaper.

Air is 1.2ghz quad core i7 10th gen / 16gb 3733mhz memory / 512gb

Pro is 1.4ghz quad core i5 8th gen / 16gb 2133mhz memory / 512gb.

In the Pro, you also get the touch bar (for better or for worse; I kind of like it, but no big deal). But its' also a heavier, thicker machine.

Also, that Pro is limited in the same way my Air is -- only 2 ports.

So I suspect it's kind of a wash. I bet we'll start seeing benchmarks soon comparing these 2 machines. I haven't dug into bus speed or cache amounts, but it's interesting how much faster the RAM on the Air is; I'm guessing slower bus speed but a higher multiple or something?

For my (home) use case, it really doesn't much matter, I just figured an 'acceptable' Pro would be $1800+, and figured the Air would be more in the $1400 range. FWIW I only really paid for the $150 CPU upgrade on the Air to get it a couple weeks sooner, I'm sure the 1.1ghz quad core i5 was the sweet spot in the lineup for price/performance.

> it's interesting how much faster the RAM on the Air is

Isn't that just the difference between DDR4 and DDR3?

Edit: Yes, I just confirmed that the last generation of MacBook Pros used DDR3 memory, whereas these new ones will use DDR4, so that's why there is such a big difference in speed. The new ones run at 3733MHz.

Ah. Looks like the store's "upgrade" button hasn't been updated to reflect the actual RAM speed. Or wasn't when i looked.

I wonder if TDP of MBA vs MBP cpus is different and if yes - how much difference does it make?

It has been:

- the retina MBA is ~ 5 W (but I think it's configurable by the manufacturer and configured up, since it has a fan, though no heat pipe, unlike the 12-inch MB that was fully passive) [Edit: I think it's 10 W.]

- the 2-port (originally no touch bar) MBP is 15 W

- the 4-port 13-inch MBP is 28 W

Of course Apple never mentions this, or the Intel CPU model numbers.

(And FWIW the pre-retina MBA is 15 W, and before the USB-C models the 13-inch Pro was 30 W only.)

Huh, I'd been holding out to see the new MBP but if this is how it compares to the Air I think that might be my choice. I've been using an old Air which does okay but I like the newer track pads and 4gb of RAM is painful with even a single browser window open.

Yup, that was my main issue. I always wanted a higher res screen than my 2011 but the 4gb was really the killer. That and, you can't even install MacOS Updates on 128gb if you have any photos :) I think 8Gb is plenty for "normal" air usage, but why not max it out to future-proof it.

Previous generation MacBook Pro 13 with i5 1.4Ghz (2019) was 14% faster in single core at Cinebench 15 and 42% faster in multi core benchmark than 2020 MacBook Air i5. Most important difference between these two processors is TDP, Air CPU is allowed to use only 10W and Pro is allowed up to 28W. Especially in sustained multicore usage the Pro has a lot of advantage, better cooling system too to get rid of the heat...

But the CPU on Air 2020 is passively cooled which means the case fan has to work twice as hard and you get hard throttling if you do anything that needs sustained work.

If you look around, the difference between the i5 and i7 on Air is negligible even though it's $300 apart. i3 to i5 makes bigger difference for smaller difference in price.

The Air upgrades, as I recall, were dual core i3 to quad core i5 to quad core i7. The quad core i5 is obviously the best one for the price. Though the i7 is only $150 over that, which was only worth it to me for the quicker shipping.

So glad they finally got rid of the butterfly keyboard! That said, I cannot wait until they retire the Touch Bar.

And add the Esc to iPad keyboards while they're at it

13.4 added key remapping for hardware keyboards. I have caps lock mapped to control and the globe/international keyboard key mapped to escape.

The Air has a perfectly sane keyboard.

Yeah, if only I could get the 16" Pro with the keyboard of the Air. I need a bit more cpu power and ram than the Air can offer sadly.

Eh, my mid-2015 MBP with an i7-4780HQ and 16gb of memory will do for now. I occasionally bump into the memory limit but hopefully I can hold out until a fully sane keyboard is an option.

Either that or hacklapintosh it

Doesn't the 16" Pro have the new keyboard? Or are there multiple new keyboards around?

I use both the 16" and the 2020 Air, the keyboards feel identical to me.

I have the 16" and the keyboard is glorious. I came from a 2015 MBP 15" and the keyboard feel is almost the same.

I assume you're talking about the latest Air? I have the 2018 model and the keyboard is awful. Awkward to type on and it frequently registers single key presses as double-presses (or, sometimes, no press at all).

The air didn't get the good keyboard until this year.

What's your problem with the touch bar? My biggest was the lack of esc key, but they adjusted that.

I actually really like the touch bar. I don't use it very often, but I never used function keys.

I use function keys all the time and am indifferent to the Touch Bar. It's fine. I just set it to show the function keys all the time and off we go. I don't need tactile feedback for keys for non-typing keys.

I look at the screen when using a computer, not the top of my hands. Therefore a set of dynamic "keys" aren't adding value to my computer experience, and frankly I'd prefer the physical feedback of a key with actual travel (e.g. standard F# row).

The Touch Bar is, at its core, an anti-pattern for people who cannot touch type and frankly a cop-out because Apple didn't want to add a touch screen (due to the high cost of updating MacOS).

Personally, I brush my fingers across it all the time and trigger random functions.

A touch bar that was pressure sensitive with haptic feedback would fix it for me, but mixing keys that you need to press down with a screen you just have to touch in the same area just creates a mess.

I’m a touch typist, and don’t look at the keyboard much. The Touch Bar, being a large smooth piece of plastic, breaks this flow.

Additionally, the Touch Bar has awful latency... hundreds of milliseconds to reconfigure itself when switching between apps??

I use function keys extensively by touch. It's the most infuriating thing too when my hands drift while feeling for keys and I accidentally press a bunch of keys on the touchbar without realizing it.

I used a macbook with a touchbar for about 6 months. Never again.

Can't change the laptop volume with your eyes closed, I use my MBP to listen to podcasts in bed sometimes so like to alter the volume just by knowing where the keys are, not having to sit up and fumble with some touch screen widget.

FWIW, I have BetterTouchTool configured so that a two finger swipe/scroll anywhere on the bar adjusts volume and a three finger one adjusts brightness.

Please Apple, let me choose one without touchbar. I have had a touchbar for over a year now and still haven’t figured out any use for it.

Edit: spelling

Something that I've found useful is https://pock.dev/ . It lets the touchbar replace the on-screen dock

I think this might deserve its own submission.

It was submitted here [0]. Let the MBP bikeshedding continue... ;)

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20229123

What I find irritating is the fact that you have to get the 2ghz CPU in order to be able to get 32gb RAM. It feels like artificial price inflation because the refresh is definitely not as exciting as people had hoped (no 14" micro LED screen, like every single "leak" suggested).

Also, the base CPU is an 8th gen chip, you need to fork out a lot of extra $$$ to get to 10th gen.

Agreed. MacBook Air has quad-core in similar clock ranges but tops out at 16GB of RAM. Pay an extra $1300-ish for Pro, you can get 32GB of RAM. There's literally nothing else in this refresh that's compelling.

And the only reason I want that RAM is for Chrome.

Check out: The great suspender.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspende...

I use it. I wish I didn't need to.

FWIW, Firefox on 32 gb got me to over 2000+ tabs the one time I tried.

32Gb of ram requires DDR4 which in this case, requires 10th gen chips.

Reading through this, I can't help but think this feels like Apple's 2.5Ghz PowerMac G5 all over again, back in like 2004.

Back then, they promised a 3Ghz G5 CPU in under a year and IBM just couldn't do it. Apple even noted it as why they were switching to Intel at the time. They couldn't keep promises and it seemingly pissed Steve off to the point of basically trashing them on stage.

This order sheet only makes sense if you think: 'What would they do if Apple couldn't get enough 10th gen parts and they showed up late?'

Obviously they would skew them to the high end models as they move mostly lower spec models. That way your product line still offers the fastest Intel hardware. But it makes for a messy nonsensical spec sheet that confuses customers.

When should I get the 8th Gen i7 that Turbos to 4.5Ghz but then when should I get the 10th Gen i7 that Turbos to 4.1Ghz?

You know what floored me?

This press release: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/05/apple-updates-13-inch...

It seems to not mention 'Intel' until nearly half way through and exclusively uses it as a technical descriptor twice. (not `Intel's newest processors`, but instead the `10th Generation Intel Core' and 'Intel Iris Plus') The first reference to the CPU just calls them '10th gen processors'. It's like watching a person refer to an ex. This is the first Macbook Pro with a 10nm processor...why don't they say that?

This mess of product line just isn't Apple-like...And I think it has them pissed.

I was going to correct you, the 8th gen intel chips support DDR4, but you're right, they don't support LPDDR4.

> why they were switching to Intel at the time. They couldn't keep promises

Makes the switch to their own ARM chips even more plausible.

It's non-obvious, but the 13" MacBook Pro is actually two different computers. On the low end it has a 15W CPU, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a single fan, and on the high end it has a 28W CPU, four Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a dual-fan system. The low end version can only be configured with 16GB of memory, whereas the high end version can be configured with 32. It's not artificial price inflation, they're actually different computers.

(p.s. - I mentioned the fans not because it's an important spec for consumers, but to highlight that the two variants are physically different internally, it's not just about swapping in a 28W CPU for a 15W one)

But of course, as is the Apple way, this is deliberately unclear. You would have no idea about this at all unless you were, at-minimum, keeping up with Intel CPU improvements (or regularly browsed Hacker News.)

Of course. Why would a consumer care how many watts CPU or fans it has? You would, but that's <1% of people who buy Macbooks.

If you're a dumb customer who doesn't care about how fast your computer is, then why are you going out of your way to buy the more expensive macbook, instead of buying an Air?

Caring about how fast your computer is isn't the same thing as caring about CPU generations, wattage or cooling solutions. Everyone wants their computer to run fast, and people know that the more expensive MacBooks are faster.

It's completely clear. You can read the RAM and CPU specs right there on the website. Hardly anyone cares how many fans their laptop has.

No, there is nothing clear about marketing a brand new laptop with a 3-year old CPU alongside a current-gen one under the same name. It's exactly as the parent comment said, they may as well be two completely different models of computer.

I really think you're off base here. Apple list the different models together with their specs (including the generation of the CPU). Are you saying that they have to make them look different because they have different internals? For most users the experience of using any of these models would be exactly the same.

I’ve been dreaming of a 32G 13” for years but now that it’s here I wish it were 64G. This for me sums up the problem with the 13” offering. Attractive form factor (for me), always 2-4 years behind on specs.

Apple apparently thinks that smaller form factor means the audience is “junior pro” or something. People who want smaller laptops are probably also running proportionally smaller workloads, thinks Apple. It makes zero sense to me.

co-dreamer here, do you have a recommendation for a 64G 13"?

Same, I'd like to get a 64G 13" too. system76 has galago, but it is 14"

I don’t know a good option. Currently I own a 15” mbp 32G, best compromise I could find when upgrading from my 2015 13” (I strongly considered a dell xps 13” at the time but the build quality and trackpad were a no go for me). If I were to upgrade I’d reluctantly get a 16” 64G mbpro. I keep sacrificing on size in exchange for build quality and specs.

My gateway MacBook was the old 13" with a discrete GPU. As far as I'm aware that was the first and the last model to have one. It was, you might imagine, quite loud when playing a video game, but it did ok.

I was hoping the rumors of a 14" were going to pan out. Maybe next time.

Not every "pro" needs huge amount of ram. I'm living fine with 8GB as a web developer. Though thinking to go 16GB on the next machine, just because.

Sitting in front of my beloved 2013 MBP 15". Reading "the new inverted T-arrangement for arrow keys". Looking down at my keyboard. Seeing said inverted T-arrangement on my seven year old MBP.

Deception and lies.

I was struck by that too. How can they say it's a new inverted-T?

>Beloved 2013 MBP 15"

This is the exact relationship I have with mine. I love this thing. Reading how frustrated people are with their newer macs makes me kind of sad, because my late 2013 15" dGPU might be the best piece of hardware I've ever bought.

The problem with the touchbar is that you cannot build muscle memory with it. You have to look down to do anything with it. That goes against the entire UX of a keyboard. How Apple hasn’t understood that basic fact yet is beyond me. This new MacBook is nothing special. A Ryzen 4000HS surface is more attractive now. The cheaper CPU Ryzen has 8 cores and is faster than the current 16” 6 core i7. Time to get rid of Intel and it’s over heating 14nm CPU’s.

Not only that, my fingers also occasionally hover over touchbar and create accidental touches constantly creating chaos. I actually got cold feet of using my Mac because of that and sticking to my PC most of the time.

I have new MBP16 2019 upgraded from MBP13 2015, avoided whole butterfly keyboard, I have got it with touch bar... few problem: - sometimes I do not realize I have touched something on touch bar --- maybe it should have click sound? - I had to remove back button (for browser apps) because I kept messing with it - sometimes I click, I see feedback of click, yet nothing happen

that said, touch bar is awesome, I'm currently typing this and it is correcting or completing my sentence, emoji as well

Completely agree. If I get an MBP with a touchbar I have to completely rework my muscle memory for "step over", "step in", "step out", and "run" that I've been using for over 20 years. Put little OLED displays on the keycaps if you want to do something gratuitously dynamic, but leave me the damn keycaps.

> Time to get rid of Intel and it’s over heating 14nm CPU’s

Current rumblings in the rumour mill say the ARM transition starts next year. Which makes sense, the $399 iPhone SE has better single-threaded performance than the fastest MacBook you can buy. An Apple A-series CPU with 4-5x the TDP of what they can put in a fanless phone or tablet is something I would very much like to see.

> The problem with the touchbar is that you cannot build muscle memory with it. You have to look down to do anything with it.

At most laptop usage angles the Touch Bar is in the periphery of your vision, and I can go for buttons that are always in the same place, like the volume/brightness sliders, without having to give it a conscious glance.

You have to look up what each F# key does in each app.

Interesting to see they upgraded the RAM, but still kept it LPDDR3, even though all other Macs have DDR4 (except for the MacBook Air, which as LPDDR4X). At this price point I would honestly expect DDR4 in a "Pro" machine.

To get the 32GB of RAM option, you have to select the configs that have the 10th gen chips which change over to 3733MHz LPDDR4X.

Wait, what? Hasn't DDR3 been phased out nearly everywhere about 5 years ago?

LP = low power. It gives Apple laptops incredible sleep times, and Apple will take LPDDR3 over DDR4 given that choice.

LPDDR4 (X) is a thing...

IIRC there was some problem with LPDDR4 having issues with sleeping power consumption that slowed Apple’s adoption of it.

That is DDR4 (no LP). MacBook Air 2020, MacBook Pro 16", and the most expensive MacBook Pro 13" configuration use LPDDR4.

I wish I could find the old HN comment I’m thinking of; there was some combination of memory size, board compatibility, chipset and ram that slowed Apple from moving from LPDDR3 to LPDDR4. Such restrictions might still apply to the older chips used in their non-flagship machines.

That is, if I could remember the specific details.

Intel CPUs don't support LPDDR4(X) until Ice Lake. So previous MacBooks stuck at LPDDR3 (then max capacity is limited to 16GB) or go to DDR4(more max capacity but more power consumption).

It's interesting. From the GPU and the remainder of the configuration (2 USB-C ports), the two cheaper models seem to be the same as the 2019 MacBook Pro, but with the fixed keyboard plus double the SSD storage for the same price. If this is the case, then the CPU/GPU are even weaker than the mid-2018 4 USB-C ports model.

Which raises the question, why would anyone (who doesn't care about the Touch Bar) buy the 1499 MacBook Pro and not the 1499 MacBook Air? The Air is slower in multi-core benchmarks, but offers double the SSD at that price (512GB), has 3733‑MHz LPDDR4 memory, and has a more power-efficient 10th generation CPU, AVX-512, and probably better GPU.

Disappointed we didn't see a 14" in a 13.3" body, or anything otherwise exciting here.

I for one prefer the butterfly keyboard. So the magic keyboard is at best a neutral move (I think a downgrade). For those folks who loathe the butterfly, I'm sure they'll be delighted at a 13" with the new magic keyboard. For me, it looks like the 2018 will continue to be on my desk. Happy that I maxed it at time of purchase.

Maybe an ARM Macbook in 2021 is in my future.

Still a lot of bezel on these, I was expecting to see less, at least down the sides.

Probably have hard-coded screen paint calculations for typical macOS and a need for massive multi-year refactor to allow non-typical screen sizes (e.g. 1cm more when removing the bezels on 13").

Semi-sarcasm.

When you consider that Apple had a 12” Macbook (w/ Retina Display) in the lineup 5 years ago the current lineup is a bit disappointing.

Also the distinction between the Air and the 13” Macbook is not clear.

That said: this is a decent update for a decent laptop and I’m looking forward to what is to come. The rumors re 14” form factor and ARM based Macbooks do sound intriguing.

In the meantime I think the recommendation re when to buy a new Mac is as it always has been: when you need one. Don’t wait for a specific update or rumor, otherwise you might have to wait for years in some cases :)

I don't know why people in this thread, keep comparing macbooks to dell xps. they're not equivalent. Thinkpad's X & T series are probably the only machines hardware wise that compare to macbook from durability and working out of the box with Linux. a t490 released last year, has better specs than the new 13" macbook. And I will applaud apple for bringing back a saner keyboard n eSC key.

Anyone have any insight into why they might not have included "Wi-Fi 6" aka 802.11ax? I was under the impression that it's current get now even if there's not a lot of support yet.

Are we still lacking good chipsets with support?

Is the headphone jack still on the right? (Rhetorical question.)

Still an insane choice as headphones have their wires on the left ear so when on my work macbook i have a wire either under or over my wrists. (Or behind the display, which shortens cable length significantly and pulls a sharp angle which will ruin my Sony MDR 7506 soon enough.

I'm grateful we still have the headphone jack at all.

A $12 usb c DAC will fix this, unless you are already using all of your thunderbolt ports.

The press release lost me at 'physical escape key'. I remember I had the same feeling seeing the ads for iPhone 3g with 'copy/paste'. Not many companies in the world can get away with advertising a technology that existed for decades as top product features in current lineup.

Back to Mac laptops, hardware is really not that exciting. It feels as the one major thing Apple has over the competition is macOS. So the combination of hardware and software is still the best one on the market (like IBM P series laptops were in the decade before Lenovo took over).

Good that they went for more less the same setup as in 16 inch model. The escape key and old keyboard switches really do make the difference for me.

But the size of the 16 inch is huge compared to 13 inch. Not too comfy to hold it on my lap when travelling by train. Finally there's an option.

Also, you can't really open the 16" during a flight in economy class.

Not that we are flying anytime soon. Could as well get an iMac...

I downgraded from a 2015 retina mbp 15" to a 13", and the 15" just seems monstrous now. I love the size of 12"-13" laptops. They weigh less, are much more portable, and I don't actually need all that real estate.

Really glad I bought this year's MacBook Air instead of waiting for this. Seems like a much better deal to me

Are you coding on it? I'm a bit worried about the thermals, and whether I would get fan noise when I'm compiling or running my 3 minute test suite.

I’ll tell you a little secret: when compiling or running multi-minute test suites, or sometimes even just being in a videochat, the fans rev up, and sound like a weak hair dryer, even on the 16” MBP (which is what I currently use).

The thermals on Apple laptops from the last several years don’t seem to be designed to work without frequently revving the fans way up.

Ugh, I was afraid of that. I've been clinging to my 2013 MBP, waiting for an upgrade with a bearable keyboard, and then when the 2020 MBA came along I thought I might have the ideal machine, but then I started hearing about the thermals. Was hoping the new 13 inch MBP might fit the bill instead, but it sounds like the thermals are just kinda crappy these days.

I am, I don't see much a difference at all compared to my 2016 15" MacBook Pro for Xcode projects. Whenever I need more power, I just ssh into my server with strong specs and start the process.

Does this use the 2020 redesigned keyboard with longer travel? That's literally the only thing I care about that they can potentially change.

Yes.

Yes

I recently bought the 2020 Macbook Air after breaking my 2017 (18?) Macbook Pro. No touch bar, new "magic" keyboard.

Keyboard is great. I think I still prefer the chiclet keys but these are close enough. Function row is far superior to the touch bar. The touch ID button is great too. Makes using 1password much more convenient.

Small battery (which means fast charge times) and long battery life are huge for me. I've got 8 1/2 hours remaining on 91% after >1 hour of usage.

I unfortunately haven't done any local development on the machine. I ssh into a linux machine on the network. But I don't think the fans ever spin up. And it never feels hot to the touch.

I spent two weeks doing remote dev work with a 2012 Macbook Air and another week doing remote dev work with the 2020 Macbook Air. Since processing power was irrelevant my experience between the two was mixed. The 2020 Air has a better trackpad and screen. But the 2012 Air has the better keyboard. I could have used the 2012 for the rest of my life had it had a better screen.

Anyway... just some thoughts for anyone looking for a new macbook.

Dear Apple... I will pay $200 extra for the option of a keyboard with physical function keys and no touchbar.

Sincerely, Disappointed Customer.

Bragging about a "dedicated escape key", T-shaped arrow pad and better keyboard in the marketing materials for this thing is the very definition of chutzpah.

So when they leave the escape key out people complain and when they include an escape key people complain?

At least Apple seems to have listened to customer feedback here.

Crazy. Heard of the communist pig story. We all thank for the supreme leader to remove the pig which we do not ask for in the first place. Thank you.

Now without missing an Escape key!

Another year, another laughable release with the same BS language trying to dazzle "Pro" wanna-be's. There is nothing Pro about these machines.

if 32 GB is not “pro”, i don’t know if we have the same understanding about what “pro” means

That’s like... 1 Slack and a dozen Chrome tabs. :|

I have 64GB in my Thinkpad P71. I got it ~2 years ago. Why so much ram? I make money with this beast. How's your Starbucks?

I bet I make at least twice the money with half the RAM. ;)

Weird thing to belittle someone over there man.

you basically did the same thing with your comment

I'm just speaking his language to deflate his ego a little bit by showing him that his point that RAM = money has no basis in reality.

I was making fun of the fact that he thought 32 was pro. I slam into the 64gb limit on my laptop daily.

I think that's egotistical gatekeeping. There's no basis for 64GB being "pro" and 32GB not (or even 16GB or 8GB, for that matter). You can make millions of dollars on an MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM. Your use case does not dictate what is a reasonable amount for other professionals.

What do you do with 64 GB on your personal machine to use it up completely? Just curious..

Have you ever been to a FAANG campus? There are thousands of engineers walking around with MacBooks. I’m pretty sure those engineers would be considered to be professional

Where it doesn't matter that the maxed out specs at which point you can call the machine "Pro" cost something like €3000?

I'm sorry, but 8GB LPDDR3 and 256GB SSD with 2 USB-C ports and jet engine fans aren't really that "Pro".

You are moving the goalposts. So the high end version of the laptop is “pro” but the cheaper one isn’t? Doesn’t this follow for other similar ultra books?

Why does a computer have to be cheap-ish to be “pro”?

Because it carries the "Pro" label. Why not just call it Macbook then? Why release what is essentially 2 products under one label, confusing consumers. It's predatory because Apple charges way too much for way too little when it comes to the Intel Gen8 models of the 2020 MBP.

$1800 if you want more than 2 ports (one of which is for charging). Between this and the Touch Bar, I’ll probably get an MBA instead to replace my 2017 Pro.

If you don't mind fan noise that is. The 2020 Air has shit cooling.

Ugh, good to know. You have one?

I wanted one because on paper it looked great for my needs.

But it turns out the CPU has passive cooling and the case fan needs to work very hard to keep it cool. At least the i5 model which is the one I was considering. I don't know about the i3.

Do you know where to find out more about this? I like that the fan practically never spins up on my 2017 MBP, but of course the keyboard is garbage. I'm not a dev so perhaps I could get by with a lesser processor, but I wouldn't want to go to the trouble of swapping to get something that is actually slower than my current machine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSgi2deRivc

> At around 30% CPU load (installation of OS updates), the fan is clearly audible and we are already above 40 dB(A), which is hard to understand considering the low performance level.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-new-2020-MacBook-Air-Core-...

I enjoy my Macbook a lot but I wonder when people will crack and not shove money into Apple's behind for "premium" machines with so many flaws.

I love my MBP but its issues make me feel like €1000 less and I'd be perfectly happy.

I was so looking forward to the rumored 14-inch MBP, in which case I would have upgraded my MBP Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015.

Also, having no option for a keyboard with function keys on any MBP model anymore is just disappointing. Why are they so stubborn with that touchbar?!

If you’re living with a 2015 13” Pro the MacBook Air is a huge upgrade if you opt for 16 RAM and the quad core CPU. I just upgraded and it can handle anything I throw at it (.NET Core, Angular, Docker, JetBrains IDEs)

i5 or i7? How is the temperature? There are reports that Air has issues with overheating.

What's the real value in paying more for this compared to getting a new MacBook Air?

I'm wondering the same. My wife has an i5, 16GB, 256GB air showing up today. At the same price of the base 13 pro, I think the air is the better buy.

I don't understand why they still sell anything with < 16GB ram in the base config.

This and "why is it DDR3 and therefore why is it a Gen8 CPU?" and "why is the storage so bad?" (256GB base is doubled now but still laughable) and "why cant you just drop the useless TouchBar or at least offer that option?" and maybe also "why do we have 1" bezels in 2020?"

"with standard storage starting at 256GB all the way up to 1TB"

This has to be a joke right?

Better cooling.

The big thing is thermal design. In the new MBA, a moderate load spins up the fans really loud, whereas in the MBPs, it takes a pegged CPU/GPU to even turn the fans on.

Honorable mention: better screen in terms of colors and brightness. Probably a faster SSD. More TB3 ports.

I'd love to see this tested with the new MBP. My 2015 13" MBP behaves as you describe, you pretty much never hear the fan unless you are pegging the CPU. But on my 2018 13" MBP the slightest load will get the fan going and it's terrible.

> whereas in the MBPs, it takes a pegged CPU/GPU to even turn the fans on.

This hasn't been true since the 2015 models, the USB-C era will turn fans on at the drop of a hat.

My new 16 inch crashes once every 48-72 hours. Been pretty upset with it so far.

Mine did too occasionally also had other issues (like random wakes and not returning to sleep), but the upgrade to 15.4 fixed everything.

Do you have any USB-C hubs attached to it? It happened to me, and it stopped when I switched hubs (tried over 4 of them)

The escape button escaped from the touchbar!

$2k for an i5? No thanks. I can max out a HP Spectre x360 with an i7, 16GB, 4K OLED touchscreen, and 2TB NVMe and come in under $1900. Plus its lighter, has better battery life, better cameras, and a better keyboard. Get it with just the 256GB NVMe, and I can pare that down to $1570.

https://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/spectre-x360-211501--1

But can it run MacOS? :)

It probably can, although some tinkering is involved.

https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/guide-high-sierra-on-hp-s...

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xznw4/how-to-make-a-hack...

But yeah... not easily enough that many consumers would consider doing it over directly buying a mac.

There is a legal aspect too. How long Apple will allow/tolerate this?

I don't think they allow it necessarily. They have explicit licensing terms which say that MacOS can only be installed and used on Apple hardware.

How long they tolerate it is another question, and I don't think anyone knows for sure. But if hackintoshing becomes easier (imagine a one click installer on a Dell/HP/ASUS PC), I'd imagine they'd start pursuing people.

I think there was also an individual/company that would build PCs, install MacOS, and sell them for a profit. IIRC, they were shut down.

If I want to use an operating system based on Unix O/S with a fancy window system, I'll use Elementary OS and pocket the $600+ bucks, thanks. There is not a single Mac-only app that can't be replaced by a better app at free or equal cost.

I mean, x code can’t be replaced.

You would have a rough time finding something as good as or better than Logic Pro for $200, too.

Sketch is also very popular, although I have never used it personally.

What about the quality of the webcam?

I need to do a lot of video conferencing nowadays, and the macbook air 2020 webcam is worse than the rear facing camera of a Nokia 3210.

It's still the exact same potato-cam in every model, from the Air to the $$$ MacBook Pro "16.

How do people WFH with their new $$$ macbooks ? Is there any external cam you would recommend ?

I use a Pixel 3a (rear camera) connected over USB + Droidcam as my webcam.

Droidcam doesn't exist for MacOS?

It’s not easy to iterate in hardware and even harder to go back on a failed design. but agreed that Touch Bar needs to be revisited somehow.

If they were serious about speed, they'd have something to show regarding how well they can manage core temperatures.

So, no model with physical F-keys available anymore… touchbar only.

MacBook Air still has the physical F keys.

But shit cooling

Is it just me or is Apple starting to fall woefully behind non-mac hardware competitors in both price and perf?

I used to look forward to these announcements, now it's just 'we upgraded to a +1 generation config (still 1-2 generations behind what others are doing), that'll be 2000 bucks thanks'. Advertising 4 cores and 2018 Iris graphics as if it's some kind of achievement, when competitors have full dGpu solutions and 6 cores in same sized chassis at the same price bracket. They're taking a bit of a piss at this point.

It's not like pulling stuff like this is new for Apple but I think Jobs being dead has caused it to happen a LOT more.

Perhaps, but show me build quality on the same level in the PC world. Even though I find Apple lagging behind it's previous standards in build quality, it's still better that most in the PC world.

(I'm still on a mid 2015 MBP and completely content to stay with it.)

Dell XPS 15.

I own one and this is just not true.

Not even close. All plastic, much worse touchpad and coil whine in all models I cared to check up on.

It's carbon fiber composite and machined aluminum. Yes, there is some plastic, but it's solid as shit.

No coil whine in mine. Touchpad idk, because I don't care that much about miniscule differences in touchpads, but it does the job as well as any high end laptop. All touchpads are trash imo, so I find it hard to prefer one over the other.

Most important for me when writing code is keyboard and screen. The kn is acceptable. The matte screen is a must for me. Even if it was all plastic, tbh I'd still take it for the matte screen.

I think we have different subjective tastes, I use my laptop docked most of the time, but the touchpad on macs is the only acceptable one I've used. All others fall that 5-10% below in performance and smoothness that makes them unusable. It's miniscule, but it's the most important final few percentage points.

Not a huge fan of matte screens either, I like pretty colors that pop and rarely work outside. Although I did have a privacy screen on my computer for a bit which was fun.

Even indoors I find the reflections awful on non matte monitors.

If you have your laptop permadocked, why do you care about touchpad? Surely you use a mouse?

I also own a Precision M3800 (the business version of XPS 15). It is on par performance-wise but not in fit and finish (rubberized wrist-rest? what was Dell thinking?) Granted there are many generations of the XPS 15.

Hell no... for reasons not on my part I have one of these. I won't list the problems but I'll just say this: I just want my 2015 Macbook back.

Huawei MateBook X Pro

I feel like a broken record but I must push back on the 'quality'. Just in personal experience, we've had macs swell up, keyboards repeatedly fail, expensive repairs.

Maybe the fit-and-finish is high grade but actualy _quality_ is alarmingly low, IMHO, especially for the price.

And if you're on a machine from 5 years ago, maybe you missed the recent plummet.

I'm not looking for what is good, just what's better. Do you have a recommendation for what is better in the PC world?

I think the person you replied to is saying that while the grade of macbooks is good (which normal people call quality), the quality of macbooks is not (ie, does what it says on the tin, and the keyboard lasts the life of the laptop).

It's the BMW argument. Great interior, power, handling. Feels like quality. Actual quality sucks because the thing needs more repairs than a Toyota.

https://www.brainbok.com/guide/pmp/study-notes/quality-vs-gr...

The Lenovo Thinkpad series is well built. The P50 (not sure what replaced it) is really solid, for example.

I have a T480 and it’s the worst laptop I’ve ever owned. Had to send it back once for repairs already. The regular charging port no longer works so I use one of the other USB-C ports, which is now crumbling from the inside. The touchpad moves on its own. And worse, a failed firmware update has corrupted the Intel Management Engine (MeSpiLock failed message every boot) that I refuse to install Windows to fix. Finally, the absurdity of the never-fixed throttling issue on Linux — and Docker if you use Windows — makes it an awful machine for any kind of development. I spent a good chunk of money on this computer and I feel stuck with it. I will stay far away from Thinkpads in the future. Wide berth advised.

You have the last good one. My 2015 died and my employer gave me a 2017 that promptly died 3 months later. Apple Care and the genius bar were a pretty shitty customer service experience but I eventually got it back. The keyboard is worse than the rubber domes on the $200 Walmart Black friday special I got several years ago. That's not a joke. For the 2017 model Ram maxed out at 16gb which made it a laughing stock for that era. The touchpad is bigger and still good, but feels substantially worse than the 2015. After a year the battery life was a joke @ <50% brightness. It doesn't feel noticably faster than the 2015 either.

My 2015 was the best laptop I've ever used by a longshot. Thinkpads of the same era match it in build quality and have slightly better keyboards but the touchpad and the Mac workflow are something I grew to love.

The keyboard on the 2017 was so bad when a coworker with an old model was showing me how to do something on my laptop he genuinely thought it was broken.

It might depend on your typing style. If you hit the keys with force, you might prefer rubber domes/mech keyboards, if you flow around the keyboard just gently tapping the keys, butterfly is amazing. I would easily pay $200 for a desktop keyboard that gives the same typing experience.

I'm fairly heavy handed so maybe that's why it doesn't appeal to me. I use Box Navy switches on one of my mechanical keyboards. Those are notoriously heavy.

Oh man! Kailh Box Navy have actuation force of 85g – 95g. I found 50g mx blues too heavy for my fingers.

Kailh might make something lighter than MX blues. Not sure what's out there on the light side. I'm sure cherry or someone must make something nice that still clicks. I also use linear switches around 60-70g.

Browns are lighter. Low profile Kailhs are even lighter. Right now I am using a scissor switch keyboard and I enjoy it a lot, but I am going to give kailh low profile browns a try. I like the general feeling of mech keyboards, but I don't like blues. I hope browns will be it. If not, scissor switch works well for me too, although my keyboard has issues with polling rate, sometimes when I type fast it swaps keys around.

"you're holding it the wrong way.."

I have a work provided 2019 13" Mac Book Pro. I was hesitant to let them replace my 2014 MBP because of all the negative press about the new keyboards. FWIW, I now prefer the 2019 keyboard over my personal 2014's MBP, the latter's keyboard now seems mushy and imprecise. So, aside from the touchbar, which I still don't love, I prefer the 2019 MBP over the older model.

That's what I've been saying as well to those who ask. The last good one. Even though it was the staingate one. Typing this on a banged up 2015 13inch. It's seen MacOS, Win for a year and now is on Kubuntu. Battery doesn't hold an hour, but I have yet to overcome the reluctance to pay for something not as good.

Well, competitors are still behind Apple. They offer worse touchpad, worse screens (it's either 16:9 or weird resolution), no macOS, worse speakers, worse microphone, worse battery.

No sure that no macOS makes competitors objectively worse.

Objectively not, but in practice a lot of people are locked in Apple ecosystem, for long time MacBooks were the only good laptops for development with support of communicators, graphic tools etc.

It's changing with Linux and WSL, but can't blame people to stay with macOS if it works for them.

Personally I'm using linux and thinkpad, but even x1 carbon falls short to MacBooks in areas I mentioned before.

Yep, I'm using an X1 Yoga, still not nearly as nice to use as OSX on a Macbook Pro that's 3 years older than it, and that's with either Windows or Linux. Ubuntu touchpad drivers are pretty bad, the windows ones are tolerable but still fail at multi-finger gestures. I really like the touchscreen, but the display colors/look aren't nearly as good. Overally pretty disappointed for a system that's close to top-spec when compared to my base spec MBP from years earlier (but it does run my Windows applications for work which I need).

Laugh as much as you want but to me (and many others) it actually is. I would look at other manufacturers for their hardware, but sadly it's all non-MacOs and I value this operating system above anything else for my needs (work and personal).

Nobody has to be laughing at anyone else, just saying that other platforms and ecosystems are also viable.

Except they aren't. I need a top class desktop operating system with top class unix environment support and tools. Windows10 might be getting close to a top class desktop os, but sadly WSL is years behind and simply feels like forced afterthought. Linux fills the unix env/tools box, but doesn't even gets close to desktop operating system quality bar of MacOS.

macOS is definitely not a top class UNIX environment, not even by a long shot. It is an alien hybrid of outdated BSD tools and toolchains. Even Xcode, which was amazing a decade ago, is now a joke compared to other environments and specialized tools nowadays.

Since Jobs died, the company has slowly allowed their development-focused machines and toolset to rot. The company now only caters to artists and it shows with their "Pro" offerings, including the Mac Pro.

As for the desktop features, all 3 major operating systems are the same. Claiming otherwise is not knowing how to use each of them.

I'm not sure if you're claiming that Linux is a "major desktop operating system" (desktop added for clarity based on the context of your statement), but if you are your statement is badly misinformed.

I use Linux in (many) VMs where I have to in order to run esoteric toolchains for embedded stuff. There is no distribution of Linux that provides bulletproof basic desktop usability anywhere near the level of OS X or Windows 10. Nothing even in the same ballpark. And I've used Linux since the days when Slackware came on a set of 3.5" floppies, so I'm not some Linux hater or incompetent here -- I've got a significant amount of experience with the OS in many of its flavors. When you can get any distribution of Linux to accurately handle plugging in external monitors every time, maybe we can talk.

Xcode is an excellent IDE - it's second really only to Visual Studio.

My only complaint about Macs today is the Touch Bar, because they replaced my f-keys with it and it's useless to me as a developer. That's at least partially mitigated by my das keyboard.

Nearly every other dev I know uses a MacBook Pro. The Mac Pro is a production machine for movies, it's not really part of the discussion here.

Of course I am claiming Linux is a major operating system. It is the most widely deployed operating system in the world, after all.

For desktop in bare metal, Linux is extremely bad, yes, but most people use it as a desktop in a VM within another host OS.

Xcode is an excellent IDE... if you don't know better or are into iOS/Swift development (due to legal reasons).

I know nobody that uses a MacBook Pro in my field. I know it is common in webdev and specially mobile dev fields, though, so I give you that.

It's not a major operating system outside of server use.

Your claim was this:

"As for the desktop features, all 3 major operating systems are the same. Claiming otherwise is not knowing how to use each of them." -- that's a demonstrably false statement, which you're apparently trying to walk back now by claiming server installations are the same as desktop use. Linux has essentially zero desktop market share, because it's a very poor desktop OS, and is in no way comparable to either of the leading desktop operating systems, which was your claim. And no one I know uses Linux as a desktop inside another OS. Plenty of people use an ssh session into a Linux machine to compile things, but that's not using it as a desktop. Very few people would want to use an OS in a VM as their main desktop, especially since that doesn't even resolve the issues that make it a terrible desktop OS!

I'm using Xcode on a MacBook Pro to do C++ development for an embedded system right now. I've used it to write C applications in the past. I don't do webdev ever and generally don't do mobile. Nearly everyone in my field uses a MacBook Pro, for everything from firmware development up. The webdev kids seem to be the the Linux zealots from what I've seen.

> It's not a major operating system outside of server use.

You are forgetting Android, embedded, web servers, networking equipment of all kinds, HPC and supercomputing, HFT, automotive, aerospace and many other fields.

Linux is, by far, the operating system with the most deployed systems out there.

> that's a demonstrably false statement, which you're apparently trying to walk back now by claiming server installations are the same as desktop use

I am not backing from anything, and I have not claimed anything about servers so far until this post.

Linux is the third desktop operating system, whether you like it or not. At home, in fact, it is not that far from macOS (4%), Linux (1%).

Given you talk about "demonstrable" things, I refer you to surveys like Steam's.

At work, Windows is even more prevalent, and those surveys do not include VM (work/non-gaming) usage where most people I know use it.

> Nearly everyone in my field uses a MacBook Pro, for everything from firmware development up

Perhaps you are in the US, where Apple has a disproportionate market share (up to 30% IIRC) compared to anywhere else in the world. I also work on embedded and no one uses a Mac here, nor Xcode. A ThinkPad or a Dell with a Linux VM is the proper choice. Xcode for firmware development sounds very odd, too.

The entire context of the discussion was desktop operating systems, not embedded devices. Aerospace doesn't run Linux on anything I've ever even heard of, that would be foolhardy to the extreme. They're running things like QNX and different variants of real time operating systems. Automotive does run it on non-critical things, but even that is pretty silly. Most critical systems on vehicles do not run Linux either. Most networking gear doesn't run Linux -- some consumer things do, but many run some form of BSD or some proprietary OS(ios).

Android is barely Linux (and if you want to add mobile phones into the discussion you'd have to realize that iOS is actually the same thing as OS X..), and the rest aren't desktop operating systems at all -- and many of them don't run Linux either.

But again, the context, and your comment, was about the desktop. Linux isn't there.

You call Linux the "third" desktop operating system by default because its desktop share isn't exactly zero. It's quite close to zero, but not exactly. That's all.

Windows & OS X are the only major desktop operating systems.

And yes, I'm in the US. I'm not sure that really matters that much. Obviously different shops will do things differently. You don't use a Mac, so your worldview is that they aren't a thing. That's simply not correct. There's a wide world outside your bubble. A Thinkpad / Dell with a Linux VM is your choice, not "the proper" choice.

I'm not an OS zealot -- I use both of the major desktop operating systems, and I use others where they're appropriate -- have used Linux for decades. Until Linux has MS Office running natively on it, it will never have a desktop market. No, it's still not the year of the Linux Desktop. Probably never will be.

And Xcode is a perfectly usable C & C++ IDE. Why wouldn't you use it for firmware?

> Aerospace doesn't run Linux on anything I've ever even heard of, that would be foolhardy to the extreme.

It will shock you to learn that most stuff out there now works on Linux and soft RT Linux. For hard RT where Linux does not fit the bill, specialized operating systems are used.

> Android is barely Linux

It is actually 100% Linux.

> the rest aren't desktop operating systems at all

Luckily not everyone working on about half a dozen of them thinks like you!

> You call Linux the "third" desktop operating system by default because its desktop share isn't exactly zero.

1% is "near zero"? So millions and millions of desktops are "zero"?

We should be telling Canonical, Valve, Microsoft and hundreds of other companies that depend on "desktop" Linux to work!

> And yes, I'm in the US. I'm not sure that really matters that much.

As I explained, the market share in the US is wildly different than in the rest of the world.

> You don't use a Mac, so your worldview is that they aren't a thing.

Hah. I have used Apple systems and Xcode for many years. I own (have owned, my last was right before the Touch Bar debacle) several Macs in my life. That is why I know a decade ago they were on top of their game and now the ecosystem sucks for devs.

In another thread I said I think the culture of the Mac died with Jobs and the company switched to the profitable part too much (the iPhones and such).

> Until Linux has MS Office running natively on it, it will never have a desktop market.

Desktop market != Office market. Of course Linux has almost no market on typical companies with employees doing Word and Excel 8-5.

> And Xcode is a perfectly usable C & C++ IDE. Why wouldn't you use it for firmware?

Because everything else is just plainly better, or open source, or free, or cross-platform, or...

Yes, Xcode is perfectly usable for C++. SublimeText + plugins is perfectly usable, too. I can also do my job pretty well with gedit or vim or emacs. And if needed I can do it with bloody Notepad too. That does not mean I choose them nor that they are the best.

Not in aerospace or anywhere else where life & safety are at stake. I'm quite familiar with those worlds, and Linux doesn't exist there.

Android is not 100% Linux. It's a phone OS that runs a Linux kernel and essentially nothing else that even looks like a desktop Linux (remember, that's the discussion).

Yes, 1% is near zero. For desktop use, the only people who use Linux are devs who are completely buried in the Linux world, and OS zealots. The market outside of that vanishingly small sector of desktop users is zero -- not close to zero, not 1%, zero. No one runs Linux on the desktop because they want to run Linux on the desktop -- you don't even do it. They run it because they have no other alternative, or because their religion demands it.

Nothing has changed in the Mac "ecosystem" to make their machines worse for devs in the last ten years. I'm really at a loss to even begin to understand what you are talking about here. It simply isn't so.

Again, your opinion is that you don't like Xcode. Nothing else you've posted suggests a real fact.

I've written plenty of code in vi -- even in ed, in Netbeans, whatever. I like Xcode because it works really well, and if you're in the Mac ecosystem it's designed to work well there. I don't care if an IDE is open source, I don't care if it's "free" (Xcode is), and I don't care if it's cross platform. Those items mean nothing to me, they do nothing for me. If I need to write on a linux system I'll pull up netbeans or eclipse. Or I'll write it in an ssh session using vi. So what?

You're continuing to state your opinions as though they are some objective fact. You don't like Macs for some reason since Jobs died. That's your opinion. It doesn't match that of many others.

I think you're missing the point where I treat the "top class desktop operating system with top class unix environment support and tools" as a whole, and not as two separate things. To me MacOS is the top class desktop operating system with top class unix env support, nothing else gets close to this definition. Other operating systems could get close to other definitions, maybe even surpass it, but not to this one.

Sure, your needs are your needs, but the person you're replying to is saying they aren't objectively worse, not subjectively. Windows/Linux on a PC laptop is an obviously-viable tool for a great many people, and those people may want to start looking at what's available if they aren't satisfied with Apple's offerings. Personally I'm not a fan of treating laptops as anything more than nice SSH clients to the more powerful machines where I do my actual work, but again that's subjective :)

I'll amend that a bit, I assume many of the people you speak of are in my camp, and that camp is a bit different than what you described.

Mostly I don't care about OSX. Some days i actually would prefer Linux. The reason I'm on OSX though is because I've been down the Linux desktop road, many times, and between the software and/or faulty configuration experience I use avoid it.

Random problems when I'm trying to work drive me mad. I use OSX to avoid problems.

Objectively worse? No. You are right that competitors are not objectively worse for lacking MacOS. Still, there is a large population (myself included) who is most comfortable working in macOS and considers the “Apple tax” lower than the switching costs of changing OSs.

Yes, it does. As someone who does audio recording, design work and programming, Macos, with it's unix shell that allows all my programming tools to work and the excellent support by creative software, is the only OS that works.

The design tools may also work on windows, but the development story is hilariously bad. And no, WSL 1 or 2 with all their performance hits and weird edgecases don't qualify at all to a native unix shell.

Linux is superior to macos for software development, but the creative software support is non-existant.

Really, for someone like me (and I bet there are many others like me) Macos is the the only os that works.

Where I have to use Linux, I just boot up a headless VM and ssh into it from my Mac. Saves me a lot of headache trying to run a real Linux machine and deal with x and all its BS.

Objectively? No, that’s clearly a subjective call. But it is a huge factor for why people keep buying macs.

no macos?

Apple is still behind Lenovo.

They don't have the TrackPoint, only glossy screens, not even 16:9, no Linux support, only one battery instead of two replacable ones, and so on.

Yes because Linux support would have these things flying off the shelf.

But if only Apple would release Unix computers that would be a moot point I guess.

Macs are Unix computers.

That was kind of the point...

I'm fairly sure that the general consensus is that 16:9 is ill-suited for laptops, with 16:10 or 3:2 being the "cool" aspect ratios.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the X series ThinkPads are the main competitor to the MacBook Pro series. IE, thin and targeted at professionals.

It's been years since an X-series has had a removable battery and the option for two of them. Decent-quality screens are a significant upcharge and even then barely match the Apple screen. And going over to their website, an X1 carbon 7th gen with a 10th gen Intel processor still uses LPDDR3, just like the Apple.

If you do a real comparison - beyond just "processor cores/speed, ram and disk quantity", you'll find that there really isn't a huge difference in price for specs and that you can comfortably buy the one you prefer and not feel ripped off.

I would say both the X and T series are MacBook Pro competitors. The T series aren't usually as compromisingly thin as the X Series but still aren't much thicker than an Ethernet port so they're still thin in my book. They're definitely way thinner than the P series machines.

P1 hits the sweet spot of thin AND pro. Same size as the X1 Extreme series, but geared toward business users. You can actually open it up and do some upgrades. RAM up to 64gb, up to a xeon processor, and the 1st gen is able to include nvidia quaddro gpus.

Ah yes, the P1 is an excellent machine and still manages to stay pretty thin. Its definitely an outlier of thinness in the P-series though, but is absolutely one which does not fit with my earlier comment of the P series being a bit thicker.

FWIW, most of the T series also have a good number of FRUs (field-replaceable units, what customers can easily swap out). Some models, especially the "s" versions, will have some soldered RAM but often the non-"s" versions will allow you to swap out both sticks. Wireless chips and SSDs are user-replaceable. Internal batteries are held in by screws and not glue so they're easy to replace when they age. Pretty easy to work on overall. My T460s is over 4 years old and still going strong.

I no longer care about removable batteries. I finally recycled my 2011 MacBook Air late last year, after 8 years of hard service doing development work on the go. The battery had half of what it once had, but the CPU and Ram could no longer keep up.

Removable batteries were more important back when batteries sucked, now they last the life of the machine.

Many laptops offer upgradeable RAM and some upgradeable CPUs. All laptops of my family have upgradeable RAM for instance. SSDs bays and M2 slots as well.

All LiIon batteries are around 80-85% of capacity in around 350-500 charge cycles given a decent controller and no excessive heat (which macbooks are overall bad at).

Upgradeable ram would be the only thing I’d want from Apple. With the advent of Dropbox & similar it’s been a long long time since I’ve run out of disk space. And as I’ve said before, I typically see laptops struggling to perform long before seeing their batteries give up on me.

This is just a matter of usage. MacBook Pro batteries have never lasted me more than ~3 years before signficant degredation (usually marked by swelling, needing replacement to avoid having the touchpad eject from the machine), and that number held from pre-unibody to post-retina. As an anecdote, the later generations seemed to degrade faster than the earlier ones.

Serviceable batteries are very important.

> macOS

Hold on, I would actually buy a macbook if the hardware wouldn't be annoyingly incompatible with Linux.

If hardware quality and design is desirable, there are a several options on the market. Surface Pro are extremely nice if you're into Windows. X1 Carbon is a nice option if you are after a durable and compact laptop. Razer Blade is basically a performant gaming laptop in a MacBook Pro body (though you don't have to play games on it).

Still, even with all the software and hardware issues of the recent years, there is something in Apple's computers that makes me want to keep using them.

"Surface Pro are extremely nice"

We have some at work and I don't think they are worth the money. Same for the Surface Book. I have it as my main laptop now but I think I will go back to a HP ZBook.

Many people would cite "no macOS" as a positive. However, you are bang on about the worse speakers and microphone.

I would argue that macOS isn't the selling point it used to be but it's still less annoying to me to work with than WSL on Windows 10 or wrestling with a Linux distro and shitty display drivers.

Huh, interesting. Personally I have always found homebrew to to be a poor imitation of apt-get, and really enjoyed moving back to it using WSL2.

Let's ignore no 120/144/240 Hz screens, no good GPU (or any dedicated GPU in most models), no CUDA, no Zen2, no workstation CPUs, no high-capacity RAM, finicky keyboard, bad warranty, no Linux support, bad Windows support, no proper OpenGL, no Vulkan, no Direct3D, no 32-bit software, no Ethernet, no FireWire, no USB-A, no optical drive, no HDMI, no DP, no VGA...

Definitely all advantages!

Let's also ignore all vendors with laptops that have better hardware, better warranty or better prices.

how did you miss rj-45?

Or RJ-11!

Optical drives, FireWire, 32 bit software, and VGA in 2020? What next? No PS/2 ports or ADB ports.

I use the VGA port in many conference talks I give. Modern, digital projectors are still not a guarantee and it is very awkward to go ask around for another laptop or a dongle.

I have FireWire hardware still around that I have no plan on replacing until it breaks.

Around half my games are 32-bit.

I have a library of BluRays with my favorite shows at home. I also bought some kid shows for my daughter 6 months ago that came in a DVD set.

But yeah, go laugh and make a comparison with PS/2. Everyone I listed is still in use today and many laptop vendors provide ports for them. Some will go out soon, some won't for years.

Just because you continue to use VGA, PS2, and FireWire doesn’t mean that everyone needs that. You have extremely niche needs, especially in a laptop, it’s utterly unsurprising that Apple won’t add the hardware to support them.

First of all, I haven't said I use PS/2. Quite the opposite. Trying to group all ports in the same place as a very outdated one is being intellectually dishonest. Things like FireWire and VGA are already on the way out and are not present in new laptops, but laptops used today still have them.

If I have "extremely niche needs", then why do almost all laptops sold include Ethernet/RJ-45, several USB-A ports, HDMI output, card readers, etc.?

Not everyone has bought into $50 USB-C dongle land.

They’re not done migrating to USB-C, that’s why. Every single year non-mac laptops slowly get thinner and trade another USB-A port for USB-C. The fact that all my work colleagues were issued a USB-C dock is going to accelerate this trend.

I can’t tell you the last time I saw a coworker directly use anything other than the USB-C port on their laptops, even on Lenovos with other ports. It’s only a matter of time.

Honestly, the “$50 USB-C dongle” has been great. I plug in a single cord and it provides two displays, power, USB, and Ethernet. This is everything that work laptop docks promised decades ago, except it’s an open standard! If I were to switch from a Mac to a Dell or a Lenovo, I wouldn’t need to change a thing about my current setup. Heck, I don’t even use an Apple power charger when traveling anymore, since my Anker is smaller and can barely keep my MBP topped off.

And the HN crowd should be applauding the move to USB-C it’s an industry standard and the hardware works across platforms.

If anything they should be complaining about the continued use of the lightning adapter on iOS devices.

I think the iPhone switchover to USB-C is inevitable.

Well, that or Qi. I don’t plug my phone in often anymore.

Have you looked at the latest line of business class Dells? Most of them don’t have Ethernet ports nor do they have card readers. Most of the consumer line computers don’t either. Dell is still the number one or number two PC vendor.

For digital media, especially for kids, there are many better alternatives -- including ripping the DVDs, copying them to a MicroSD card and buying a cheap Fire tablet. But, Disney+, with an iPad ($329), and Apple Arcade (no ad ridden, play to win games) is a godsend for kids.

Why would I ask for dongle. I know plenty of sales people who live and die by adapters like these: https://www.amazon.com/QGeeM-Adapter-Thunderbolt-Compatible-...)

You seem to want the equivalent of a Homermobile for laptops.

If I was going to play optical media, I’d be more interested in getting it to play on my TV than my laptop. Every time I played a DVD on the last laptop I had with a DVD drive it was always a nightmare to deal with power, HDMI, and deal with the laptops tendency to go to sleep. I’d rather just buy a dedicated optical player for the TV and be done with it.

My time is worth way more than dealing with ripping DVDs, to be honest.

Yes, streaming platforms are convenient, but no, I don't want to be limited to whatever Disney+ or Apple Arcade wants me or my kid to watch/play. I choose what shows/games are worth, not the other way around. I will pay to watch a show in streaming, but I don't pay streaming to have something to watch. If that makes sense...

So it’s more convenient to lug around a bunch of DVDs than a tablet with dozens of movies at your disposal?

I don't "lug" them around, they are placed in this thing called "bookcase". Perhaps you have heard about them! I heard they are legacy now too... :)

Ripping DVDs is something that takes very little time.

Open the drive, put DVD in, click "go" on HandBrake. Rinse and repeat.

You have all the time in the world to work while your machine is encoding them. And Plex makes the organization brainless.

>> I use the VGA port in many conference talks I give. Modern, digital projectors are still not a guarantee and it is very awkward to go ask around for another laptop or a dongle

Ever thought about buying your own dongle? Sincle you give many conference talks it might be a great investment :)

I don't need to buy one: my laptop has VGA and HDMI outputs.

That was the point...

How old is your laptop?

You forgot no floppy disk, no COM1, no parallel port, no S-Video, no PS/2, no DOS support.

FWIW all those you mention can be added with a USB device (even DOS, you can boot FreeDOS via a CD or even external floppy on modern PC) whereas the stuff jfkebwjsbx mentions cannot (except the optical drive).

FireWire is actually a trademark of Apple.

You probably mean IEEE-1394

High refresh rate screen is the only thing I'd want from that list. I'll upgrade my 2017 MBP when/if a model with >120Hz display comes out. For me it's been the greatest thing in consumer space since HDD to SSD upgrades. Having made the switch on desktop, going back to 60 Hz makes all motions (even scrolling a web page) appear incredibly choppy and distracting for a hour or two until my eyes readapt.

The resolution part is insane. I use my work Macbook at 125% scaling, which would be equivalent to 100% on a WQHD screen. There are some available on some very specific (expensive) ThinkPads from a generation I don't want and the new Ryzen ASUS Zephyrus G14 (but it seems like they absolutely don't want to sell it, I seriously have found no listing for it after spending a long time hunting down the actual model code).

There are some 4k models, but those bring more weird fractional scaling problems with them (especially bad on Linux), have battery life and are usually super expensive.

Oh ... and it's all 14 or 15" models. I'd happily take a 17 or 19" laptop - I just want enough portability so I can carry it around in a bag while commuting and have it on a desk most of the time, but, while there are some okay 17" offerings (barely any "pro" devices, though, so no swappable RAM) there is not one (apart from the insanely expensive ZBook) offering with a higher than FHD screen.

What the fuck?! Why? Don't most people use their laptops as only somewhat portable work stations? Am I the only one who finds a larger screen with more content useful?

?!?!?!!?!?

Razor has a 17” laptop that can be configured to have a 4K display, but you also have to upgrade the GPU to a RTX 2080 Max-Q. The RAM and storage is end user replaceable though and you’d have an absolute beast of a machine that could handle pretty much anything you’ll ever throw at it. It is $3700 though. https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade-pro/shop

Could say the same thing about Apple Vs Surface and Apple lacking touch/pen support, replaceable SSDs, SD ports, high viewing ratios, thicker devices.

But it's just cherrypicking isn't it...

Apple has never been particularly great on the price/performance ratio of their laptops. You buy their laptops for the fully integrated package, not for the specs.

Now with quad core ability!

Never been a mac person, but I do agree it appears to be a bit lackluster. Its not the same comparison, but for ~1800 a new home workstation with 2070 Super / 3900x 12 core CPU becomes a pretty powerful machine.

I haven't owned a mac in a while since employment now supplies me with a laptop. But my experience with this point of view is that it's about holistic vs. non-holistic thinking. When someone points at specs and tells me that X is better than Y for price, they're getting to that conclusion by ignoring a whole bunch of variables. To take this to the extreme, I had a friend genuinely say, "Why did you spend $90 on a baby monitor? You can just get a RPi, Camera, microphone, and wire it together for like $45."

I have an xps-15 for work and it's... it's okay. It's decent hardware. But I want a mac because I need a non-Windows environment and I'm just dead tired of all the jank in Ubuntu. I no-longer try to undock it because doing so is either a full reboot or the resolution/scaling gets messed up and video memory corrupts (my fonts became colour vomits).

For me, buying a Mac is basically, "here's a ton of money. Now I don't have to think about these things for 7 years." (except the last few macs questionable hardware absolutely ruined this peace of mind...)

>I'm just dead tired of all the jank in Ubuntu.

im thinking about moving to ubuntu, what sort of jank is annoying you?

Install arch i3

All OSs have their issues. I use Windows and Ubuntu daily and have had work macbooks. In a lot of cases it does come down to what you are used to, as there are design differences that aren't necessarily worse or better but when you get used to one the other feels janky.

At any rate, in Ubuntu's case things like display support are worse - especially multiple different DPI screens (yes, there are workarounds). UI is less slick in places. Some software is better supported while some have worse support. Things like that.

I've seen this mentioned a few times now on HN as a drawback of Ubuntu. Are multiple monitors really that much of a benefit that so many people use them?

Yes, they are that much of a benefit.

Until this pandemic forced me to make do with one monitor at home, I rarely used the built in screen on my work laptops; I counted on the dual monitors on my desk. The idea of using a laptop display alone is baffling to me.

I would run Windows Vista if it was the only OS with multi monitor support. Its absolutely crucial for my productivity.

absolutely. I find a pretty common workflow for me is writing code in one window while having documentation (or a header file) open in another. it's not the end of the world if I have to alt-tab back and forth, but it's much more efficient if I don't have to.

a 24-27" monitor suitable for coding is only $200-300. if you code for money, it seems like a no brainer to just get two.

It is an improvement, but not as much as some people claim. The issue is you need to move your eyes/head too much.

If you have a wide or ultra wide monitor, it is better. Otherwise, a good desktop manager with virtual desktops helps a ton.

I've tried multiple monitors a number of times through the years, and it's only been a net benefit when doing things like streaming and/or presenting via video conference (so you can have a preview monitor / live chat separate).

Other than that, my brain and neck both work a lot better with one large 4K display (currently 27" but I've been thinking about going 32").

I made this switch. After a couple years of a single (but larger) display, I can enthusiastically say I like it much better. I have the Dell UP3216Q.

and this is why I still use two 20-inch 4:3-ratio monitors in portrait mode (combined screen is 2400x1600) -- I can look at each monitor with minimal neck movement and the viewing angle for each half is independent. when i've tried a single, curved ultra-wide I still felt like the outer third on each side was a tilted away too much

Crucial.

I've got an entire monitor (really a 55" 4k TV) devoted to all the chat windows and communications I'm running for my team, another 4k monitor that I actually use to code, and then my laptop sits to the side as an auxiliary monitor where I can look things up and what not.

I have one horizontal monitor and one vertical one. Code lives on the vertical, everything else on the horizontal.

I need to run three monitors and it was a nightmare to get resolutions and scaling all correct. Even now, if I undock it might never wake up or have corrupt memory. I also had to shut off the graphics adapter switching capability so it always runs off Nvidia and therefore I have maybe 2 hours battery life in a text editor.

I had the same problems with Dell and Ubuntu ... four years ago. I guess some things don't change.

I was given a 2019 16in Macbook by work. My only complaints are the fan noise and heating issues.

But, nothing about the Apple ecosystem prevents them from also adopting the latest hardware. The only reason it could that I can think of is that it genuinely takes them 2 years to test the latest Intel CPU in each new laptop.

Compatibility with low power mobile ram is usually the thing with Apple; they care more about long battery life, especially long sleep times, than raw CPU performance.

I've been feeling a lot more of this jank from MacOS than my other devices at this point. I have a 2017 15" MBPtb and a custom desktop that dualboots Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18.04.

Frustrations I've had to deal with in MacOs that have just not been pain points in other OSes (yeah, not even on Ubuntu):

* No DisplayPort MST support[1]. I spent a large chunk of money on a monitor that had MST so I could daisy chain across two monitors and charge my laptop all with one cable and no separate dock sitting on my desk. I was heartbroken to see that it JustWorks™ on Windows 10 using the MacBook or desktop, but not on MacOS. I ended up needing to buy another expensive dock and sacrifice some desk real estate.

* If you use bluetooth audio headsets, the sound balance randomly shifts to the right if you change volume while the CPU is under load[2].

* No built in window snapping or hotkeys is kind of ridiculous in 2020. Yeah, I have paid for apps like BetterTouchTool and Moom, but it's ridiculous that this is something users have to buy standalone. I often end up assisting coworkers on their machines, and it sucks when they don't have anything setup for snapping.

* Turning WiFI off and back on quickly sometimes results in the second action being ignored. That's such a ridiculous bug to still be there.

At this point, the only killer MacOS exclusive apps I still use are iTerm2 and Homebrew (and I guess XCode out of necessity for iOS/Mac target compilation). If Apple keeps on the trajectory they've been on, I feel like I'll shift away from MacBooks for my next machine.

[1]: https://medium.com/@sebvance/everything-you-need-to-know-abo...

[2]: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/280145/macbook-pro...

In engineering we say option X is objectively better than Y, if X is superior on all metrics. This is generally not true, so wether X is better than Y is going to subjective. So we will always end up with endless discussions with "yes but this.. yes but that..".

>Is it just me or is Apple starting to fall woefully behind non-mac hardware competitors in both price and perf?

Since forever... Ok, perhaps adding the SSDs was a great touch. However, Apple is considered a fashion brand, where you pay more for the brand, itself. In virtually any regard Lenovo business laptops are a better price/value proposition: easily extensible - more memory, m2 slots, docking, pcb with conformal coating, easily serviceable keyboard, touch pads, replaceable battery, etc. A lot better thermals, like a lot. And when it comes to perf. it's not even remotely close.

And yes, multiple USB-A slots, HDMI, display port, rj-45, no dongle nonsense.

Honestly not a fan of the Lenovo line. I've always bought their tried and true models, and none of them have held up over time vs my MacBooks.

Sure on the specs/$ they were better, but overall I preferred my macbooks.

Any particular reasons?

They just didn't seem to last as long, for one reason or another. They were fine when functional. We just replaced them at a much greater rate than our Macbooks. BUT this was about 2 years ago, so a lot of our macbooks were older devices without the new keyboard mechanism.

In my personal life, my 2010 pro is still going strong. My mother uses it now - no complaints. Some things have failed, the optical drive. But man is that thing a tank.

I can defend their "chassis" as being ahead of the competition and you basically paying for the time they spent shaving shit off until it's perfect. But that damn touch bar. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the most custom of custom random hardware part, adding like half a smartphone's production cost to it. How much productivity can that thing possibly add? Who on earth says, "yea that touch bar, certainly worth more than 1TB of SSD space and 16GB of RAM!".

I can't defend their chassis. Competition offers 14" machines in 13" form-factor with thin bezels for almost a decade now.

What decade old laptop would you compare to a Macbook in design? I have only started noticing attractive competitor laptops appearing around 2014.

I'm talking about form-factor specifically. Not "design" which is subjective.

XPS 13 has had thin bezel for a long time now. Sporting smaller chassis than macs on same screen size. Here's first google result, from 2015:

https://www.ibtimes.com/dell-xps-12-xps-13-xps-15-hands-ultr...

And here is a list of various laptops with thin bezels from different brands:

https://www.colourmylearning.com/2018/09/laptops-with-minima...

They don’t expect everyone who bought the last computer update to buy this one. I work on a 13” MacBook Air from 2014 and it’s time for an update. $1500 for this feels like exactly what I’ve been waiting for.

When was the last time that over a period of years each update to a MacBook Pro was a monumental upgrade? Maybe early 2000s when they went from PowerPC to Intel? I think you’re just remembering this rosier than it really was.

Indeed. And the words that Apple puts to explain about their products is going really numb.

They should change their ambiguous tone and show the real progress in these mac.

I can absolutely get a better laptop at a reasonable price than these products and the features that offers and be more productive.

It's even worse when you notice that two of the four "new" models come with an 8th gen Intel CPU, and DDR3 memory, it's like they replaced the keyboard from the previous model and they're calling it "new".

Between selling cpu's 2 generations behind, the keyboard issues, and thermal problems in the Macbook Airs, it really seems like Apple is trying its best to alienate buyers from their laptop line. Just recommended a coworker a Macbook Air for her son, an i7, 16Gb of RAM and 512Gb SSD. From off to account creation, the fan was already running. By the time the laptop was showing the desktop it was burning to touch. Some more testing and I found out the CPU was at 94-98ºC after 4 minutes. Turns out it is by design (just take a look at the photos of the cpu cooler, separated from the fan https://www.ifixit.com/News/36480/theres-something-new-in-th...). She just returned the laptop and is exploring options from Dell and Lenovo.

Even if you like MacOS, you now have to wait before buying anything Apple until you can see a teardown just to see if it's going to survive even casual use.

Between selling cpu's 2 generations behind, the keyboard issues, and thermal problems in the Macbook Airs,

What thermal problems? I have had the Air 2020 in the Core i5 configuration for two weeks and the fan rarely spins up. Even when it does, I can touch the hottest part of the laptop without problems.

From off to account creation, the fan was already running.

That's not strange. Spotlight spends the first whatever amount of time on indexing the hard drive. Indexing implies parsing various files/file formats. This usually ends when indexing is done.

With the fixed keyboard, the MacBook Air 2020 is finally a MacBook that I love again, which I can't really say of the two butterfly Pros I had before (with the first I really disliked the keyboard, the second had a Touch Bar and I always had trouble pressing the Esc key blindly).

Honestly since Intel chips have almost all flatlined into 14nm, with the only minute improvements coming from better binning, I don't think the selling CPUs 2gens behind is an issue.

Edit-they're actually selling the 10th gen chip, not 8th gen like you describe

>> I want to go back to the 2010 MBP when it was the best designed, highest perf device available.

Not the 13". It was still packing a Core 2 Duo and the screen was 1280x800, when the Air was running 1440x900. The battery life was amazing, though!

> starting

It's been like this since forever. I can't remember a point in time where price per performance was a selling point for apple products, barring seriously oldschool machines.

They had the build quality + trendy side of the market shored up for a small time, but even then thinkpads were an easy match, albeit extremely untrendy.

For the last long while, since the regoodification of dell and the general shift towards catching up with mac in build quality across the market, they've been a poor choice for anyone looking to maximize their value.

I'm frankly shocked that someone finds this surprising these days.

My issue is forcing terrible design decisions.

No headphone port on the SE, forced touchbar on MBP.

My next laptop may not be a Mac because of the touchbar.

The "apple tax" has been a thing for decades now. I have never owned a mac but I listen to a mac-centric podcast and from their complaints I am not sure why I, a non-programmer, would ever pay the apple tax to buy one.

I guess so, a Thinkpad P graphical workstation series is cheaper than the top 13" model.

This is really typical “missing the point” when it comes to Apple hardware.

First, Apple hardware was never bleeding edge even in 2010. That’s not ever how they operated. They’ve really never played the spec war. They don’t even publicly state the RAM spec in the iPhone while Android competitors make it into a price segmenting feature.

What these computers give out is all the stuff people really care about.

The computer’s shape and even the large ancient-looking top bezel are giving you a more comfortable typing surface compared to the XPS 13 where your palms slip off the edge if your hands are too big.

https://youtu.be/5hMie-xZFzQ

Skip forward to the part talking about typing comfort.

The speakers in the Air and Pro are best in class and nothing comes close. That’s something the customer will notice and care about.

The microphones in Apple machines are incredible. Something the customer will notice and care about when they use the computer on conference calls.

And nobody else has made a trackpad anywhere near as good. Still.

I dispute the assertion that there’s a computer out there in this same form factor with a discrete GPU at a similar price point with similar specs, and if there is I’m sure it’s a GeForce MX and not a GTX or RTX, in other words, not really worth the trouble. In reality, nobody buying this class of computer gives a shit about the graphics card. Investing battery life into one is a bad trade-off. I’d also like to see this mythical computer you speak of, what model are you talking about?

I also dispute your claims on pricing in general. Dell, for example, places a gate on 16GB of RAM and the high DPI display to the highest XPS 13 model. It’s way less configurable than a similar Mac. A lot of Windows computers that seem to be equivalent to Macs omit features like a high DPI display or make them an upgrade and act like 1080p is “good enough” for customer spending almost a grand or more and doing mostly text work. I find that oversight unacceptable: a high DPI display should absolutely be standard on any computer over $700 that isn’t intended for gaming, IMO.

Expecting 6 cores or the very latest generation of every component is beside the point. Nobody notices that stuff. Only benchmarks can see the difference.

What actually makes a good computer is good ergonomics, good display, good battery life, good speakers, good microphones. The hardware internals are, in 2020 when computer performance is improving at a slower rate than ever before, nearly a complete afterthought.

Has Apple ever designed a product solely around just a couple of specs? No. Consumers unfortunately fail to realize this and compare A vs B based on cherry picked specs. The reason you can't get a top of the line CPU and GPU in the MacBook is that Apple would then have to increase the price past the point which the machine would have broad appeal, or make concessions in other important areas.

What are those important areas?

- Speakers, Mic, Webcam - Trackpad - Aluminum chassis and form factor - Touch ID - Mac OS (like it or not, this is perhaps the most important feature for those considering Macs.)

It's very possible the competitive landscape has changed since 2010 and they are placing more focus on these ancillary features than before, but the strategy has always appeared to be to deliver a superior holistic machine. I, and their financials would argue they have been doing that from before 2010 through now.

The 10nm Intel Ice Lake CPUs found in the new 13-inch MacBook Pro are currently exclusive to Apple.

Now all Apple laptops feature magic keyboards. Butterfly switches are no more!

I’m not convinced by the value of the thirteen inch pro versus the air. Same screen size, keyboard, and ports. Similar upgrade path.

I know that not all i5/i7 etc are created equal, and the 13 inch pro uses chips that draw more power, but could someone explain the more concrete difference in performance that a user would see day to day?

The 13 inch pro will get hotter faster.

The idea is that the additional room in the boost clock should allow you to open new chrome tabs and load GMail slightly faster, but if you're doing any sort of sustained performance task, you're going to hit thermal limits within a minute or two.

That's only considering the boost clock though. The thermal package on the MacBook Air is __horrid__. The MBP can sustain longer periods of boost, albeit with fans spinning up. The new MBA will literally throttle in minutes on medium/high loads due to the dysfunctional semi-passive cooling design.

Unpopular Opinion:

I prefer the butterfly. I got the new 16 and promptly returned it. I missed the crispness of the butterfly.

This issue with the prev switches is reliability. They also rapidly lose their crispness.

Even the last Pro will destroy the Air when it comes to something like video encoding, 3D rendering, etc. Anything that will run full-tilt for longer than 20 seconds.

It is faster in things like Geekbench or browser benchmarks, and if you're buying the Air you're probably not using it to do heavy lifting.

Even the last Pro will destroy the Air when it comes to something like video encoding, 3D rendering, etc. Anything that will run full-tilt for longer than 20 seconds.

The new Pro 13 (except for the most expensive configuration) have 8th generation CPUs, whereas the Air has 10th generation GPUs. Usually newer Intel generations have more extensive support for hardware encoding/decoding. The Air 2020 CPUs support AVX-512. The 2020 Airs have a faster GPU. Finally, the Airs have 3733 MHz LPDDR4X RAM and the Pros 2133 MHz LPDDR3. It's not always a given that these 8th generation Pros will be faster on a given task.

Compiling on multiple cores, most probably. Video encoding, decoding, etc. Not necessarily.

It is faster in things like Geekbench or browser benchmarks,

Single core, the Air 2020's CPU is a tad faster than the 8th generation that they put in these MacBook Pros. Multicore the Pros win, but by not that wide a margin.

For most people, the MacBook Pro 13" 2020 in the first two configurations (1499 and 1799) will be nearly equally fast for most practical purposes. So, it's mostly about whether you prefer the extra storage of the Air at the same price point or the Touch Bar. If you want something faster than ballpark Air, you should get the most expensive configuration or the Pro 16".

I'm just going by Final Cut and Handbrake benchmarks, which the 2019 Pro clearly beats the 2020 Air.

I have Macbook Pro 13 inch model from 2013 and was really looking forward to upgrading to this year's rumored Macbook Pro 14 inch laptop. Sigh! Now I will wait another year. I don't see anything in this refreshed Macbook Pro 13 inch model that is worth upgrading from my current Macbook.

I'm no fan of the TouchBar but once I rearranged it to my liking with BetterTouchTool[0], at least it's out of my way and has a modicum of usefulness.

The Escape key is the one key that even BTT didn't fix… because accidentally hitting the key does actions. I like to rest the fingers of my left hand around the upper-left corner of the keyboard, relying on touch. And triggering the escape key without pressing has been very annoying.

So seeing Apple bring back the hardware escape key fixes most of my gripes. The other improvement I'd like to see is force-touch on the touchbar. That would require some pressing in order to prevent triggering actions by simply brushing the fingers.

[0] https://folivora.ai

It's astonishing how far the MBP has fallen in ten years. My 2010 MBP was and still is the perfect laptop design. Look what Apple has taken away from us: MagSafe, SD card slot, optical audio I/O, RJ45, USB-A, even the top row of our keyboards. What have we gained? The same internal advances that are in every other computer, a gimmicky touch bar, fragile keyboard mechanism, and USB-C.

What's really sad is that none of this decline was necessary. All they had to do was leave the perfect laptop alone, and go on upgrading the internals. Were they selling the 2010-2012 MBPs at a loss or something?

To be fair, they fixed the keyboard mechanism. But agree 100% on all other points.

Could have been fixed much quicker, I don't see why we are saying they did a good job on that problem when they just replaced it in exactly the normal product cycle.

Could have been fixed within a year but it would have cost more money so nah just ship a faulty product for 4 years they'll eat it up anyway and replace it when we were gonna do a redesign anyway.

MagSafe was flawed - I’m glad it’s gone. It had massive reliability issues due to dust getting in between the connectors - which ending up causing charging problems, excessive heat at the charging port and countless charging adapter replacements.

On MBP2015 and i love magsafe.

It's saved me a fortune.

I was in my photography class and my magsafe cable was tripped about four times in one day. Crazy.

Mostly because they insist on using supposedly eco-friendly rubber that frays dangerously.

Ignoring that me buying 5 chargers across the life of a device is far worse for the environment than just 1.

My Titanium Powerbook charger still remains un-frayed and I used that laptop everyday for 9 years.

I’m on a 2012 MBP and MagSafe has worked flawlessly for 8 years for me. I think I might hold on to my MBP until it doesn’t boot up anymore, there’s no upside to “upgrading” right now, besides being able to double the ram. MagSafe, 2012 keyboard destroys 2020’s, no Touch Bar, and most importantly- it’s rock-solid reliable.

I had the very last edition magsafe connector on my 2015ish macbook. And _that_ one had the infuriating problem that the charge port got so hot that it would melt the insulation right off of the wire! I replaced the charger every few months, and it just kept happening.

I upgraded to a thinkpad.

On a 2013 Macbook air, MagSafe has worked perfectly for me for the last 7 years. Saved my laptop a couple of times too. Way more worth it than AppleCare.

Seriously are you missing optical?

I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to use an optical drive in the past 5 years. I'm guessing most of us are in a similar situation. For those instances, I pull out an old external USB blu-ray player.

Optical audio I/O. Many people might not know this, but you could actually plug in an optical S/PDIF cable into your Macbook Pro, on both the "microphone" input and "headphones" output line, to get digital audio in and out.

I had that on an 09 Pro/Unibody. It was kinda brilliant (ha). Imagine such dual type port on a phone...

The top level commenter was not talking about an optical drive like CDs or DVDs, they were talking about having optical audio connectivity through a TOSLINK mini plug.

Ah. I used to plug my old original Core 2 Duo MBP into a 5.1 system using a mini TOSlink cable, but since HDMI started doing surround audio I haven't had a need for optical audio connections. It was cool seeing a LED inside the audio jack, however.

What's the alternative? Laser beams and fibre optics are still potentially better than conductive wire. I suspect we will see a resurgence.

Except you aren't even getting the internal advances. They are seriously selling an 8th gen i5 with 8 GiB of DDR3 memory in the base models.

>Magic Keyboard also features a physical Escape key

Physical escape is what we all need right now, but like people with pre-Magic Keyboard touch bars, we're all going to have to settle for mental Escape for a while.

Hmm. If this had a ~14" display in roughly the current chassis size then it would be an instant buy for me. Now I'm not sure - is the 14" still happening? Or should I go for this one?

I’ve been a Big Mac user for the last 7 years or so. I initially moved over from Linux after experiencing the ease of the OSX operating system when working in software development without the overhead of maintaining something like Arch Linux.

I’m now looking at system76 and Pop!_OS for my next machine. They seem to be doing a really good job of creating compelling hardware and software that works well together. From the sounds of it, Pop!_OS does a really good job creating that Apple “just works” experience without all the cruft.

Pop!_OS looks interesting. Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve been using Linux since switching from MacOS and have been finding the additional setup and configuration an extra hassle I don’t want. Although not enough of a hassle to drop $1,500+ on a new machine. I might have to give this a spin.

I doubt you'll get a decently comfortable touchpad. That's the Achilles heel of the PC world, especially the generic Clevo world.

Just a spec bump and addition of the Magic Keyboard. Sure, 10th gen CPU and up to 4TB/32GB, but no 6-core CPU, no 14" screen. A lot of people are going to be disappointed.

What's the target audience for 14'' 6-core? Perhaps not as wide as a 13'' 4-core that's significantly cheaper. Those looking for a highest spec mbp would probably look into 16'' anyway

I agree - but competitors like the XPS 13 have a 6-core CPU.

Yep.. 14”.. otherwise I’d have ordered the 32gb/2tb top version

Yeah, I agree. These upgrades are kind of disappointing.

Spec bump (not even wifi6) is an indicator of a major design upgrade coming in the fall. I expect a significant exterior change or the switch to Arm processors come October.

Not this year, maybe next October and it's still a stretch..

Arrogance is an Apple trademark, but they now have become complacent regarding their products ( not their financial performance though.. )

I bought an Honor Magicbook for half the price. It's lightweight, has a beautiful case, proper touchpad (so I don't use my external apple touchpad anymore), nice keyboard, long battery life, and I can run whatever OS I want on it (I'm using Ubuntu atm, but I might try Fedora). It has usb-c, usb-a, hdmi, and headphone jacks. Everything just works.

I gave up on Mac when they broke their keyboards and started locking me out of everything. Once my macbook died, I never looked back.

I wonder how many people buying Macbook Pro's this year are trying to load up before Apple starts the ARM migration, thereby avoiding what may be a rough first year or two

In that sense, the resell value may be quite high on this one as one of the last working x86 machines where some apps may not migrate or migrate very slowly to ARM architecture in the coming years.

Everyone whined about the touchbar and keyboard of the more recent models a lot. But personally, I was fine with them. I don't really have a preference between the non-touchbar vs. touchbar models. Same goes for butterfly vs. scissor keyboards. They were all fine for me.

My person MBP is from 2015 and I've had a 2018 and 2017 15" MBP (with touchbar/butterfly switches) for work and they've all been thoroughly acceptable.

A bit disappointing the 32GB ram option is only available on the £1,799 model (which, when added, bumps the price to £2,199)

Interestingly on that model the RAM is running at a higher speed (3733MHz LPDDR4X vs. 2133MHz LPDDR3 memory)

I'm still running my MBP from 2015 which is mostly fine, but Firefox and co. eat the RAM so would be good for an update. Although for work I use the 16" 2019 model with 32GB and Firefox uses 27GB of that quite easily...

> djhworld

The ram difference is most likely because the lower-end models use 8th gen CPU, whereas the top tier uses 10th gen.

I don't get the craze. Just remap caps lock. If you use ESC enough to complain, caps lock is the more ergonomic location anyway.

The great things:

The new keyboard is always welcome. The butterfly keyboard was a huge pain. An escape key is definitely something that most of us have been waiting for !

The bad: I don't get it why Apple is still sticking with a sub-standard 720p facetime camera when they can easily upgrade that. For this video-call covid situation, a nice camera would have been nice

What I am really hoping for is a 14" laptop that includes a discrete GPU. Hopefully an Nvidia one to allow CUDA work.

Only two USB-C ports?!? That's really disappointing, I always have a yubikey in one so that only leaves one free.

Seeing this, I'm actually more inclined to get the Air since it has faster ram, a newer processor, and no touch bar. (I'd love 32gb but at Apple prices I could VPN to a custom built rig and still be under budget)

Last time I complained about this on HN I just got told that I should have bought a higher specced version. Guess my £1800 wasn’t enough for more than two ports on a “Pro” device, thanks fanboys!

Is it right about time to switch to Catalina? I was excited until I read “comes with Catalina”. Suggestions?

>Magic Keyboard also features a physical Escape key

Maybe next year we'll get a new feature, physical F1 key.

Is there a good way to figure out how much performance is best suited?

I’m considering an upgrade to my 2013 MBP retina and it would be great to know how different configurations play out in terms of speed and battery life.

Typical benchmarks are quite difficult to translate to real life usage.

To me this pricing sits too closely with the iPad Pro plus magic keyboard, which Apple has been trying to sell as good enough to be your next Computer. What’s also puzzling is that the new iPad Pro and magic keyboard combo is so heavy it’s basically a laptop.

The iPad Pro is heavier than the 2020 Macbook air, so.. yeah...

I'm still using the 2015 Macbook Pro (i7, 16GB RAM, 512 SSD) with an iPhone 6S to supplement.

So far, there has not been a reason to upgrade to any newer version of each. Maybe I'm just one of those in a small group that is content with the current experience.

I had the same setup, but the 2015 MBP died. Repair shop said it was the touchpad, then touchpad ribbon. neither fixed it.

2020 MBP 16 "feels" the same just a little faster.

I always find it so weird with laptops and TVs that they have loads of glossy pictures of just the screen, with some colourful picture, that I'm looking at on my monitor.

Are people looking at this and thinking "that is so much better than my monitor"?

Still limited to 2 USB/TB ports on the base model (and precious little else). Want more than that and you're paying a minimum of $1800.

Between limited ports and soldered in storage/memory, it feels like Apple has gone all-in on disposable computers.

Disappointing. Not 14", bezels look like they are from the 90's and the machine is rather heavy.

I am switching to XPS 13 developer edition. Goodbye Apple.

Hello Linux and a menu key on my keyboard. The greatest key that no one knows about.

What are the most essential or coolest add-ons to get for a new MacBook Pro?

Is there a good all-or-many-in-one dongle with several USB or other ports?

Are the any options for extra power supplies?

Is there a good dock for using it with a big display on a desktop?

As others have mentioned, get a silicone keyboard cover, cut the touch bar part of it, and use a hot glue gun to glue it over the touchbar.

If you happen to buy a 2019 macbook pro, then don't worry with that, just type on the silicon keyboard cover. It will be bad, but not as bad as using the actual keyboard directly.

>Is there a good all-or-many-in-one dongle with several USB or other ports?

After struggling for a few years trying to use dongles I'm actually becoming convinced such a thing might not be possible. My screens flicker, my drives drop out all sorts of issues no matter what the dongle or the devices.

The other thing that points to this is the fact Apple doesn't just sell one, they could easily sell a USB-A/Display port/Power dock for around $400 and people would lap it up but curiously they don't because I think deep down they have realized the only reliable way to use a USB-C port is a one to one conversion.

I bought this in the high end configuration To be my primary personal computer. I haven’t figured out what dock I’m going to buy yet, but will definitely be looking for a one-plug-for-everything setup.

I have an HP Z27 display that I really like for this reason. It’s got one (usb-c) umbilical cord to my 15” MBP which provides power to the Mac, delivers video to the display, and then the display itself is a hub.

You can saturate one link though so I ended up having a second usb-c cord to a hub mounted with Velcro to the bottom of my desk for the situations where I need something like gigabit Ethernet or another peripheral.

"the best typing experience ever on a Mac notebook"

I guess this is a bit subjective, but a greatly prefer the keyboard on my 2010 MBP to the latest "magic" keyboard in the 16' MBPs

so the new -macbook air has very poor cooling and throttles the cpu well below max capacity. -macbook 13" now costs 1800 solely for an up to date processor, a whopping 400$ to add 16gb of ram, no speaker upgrade, no 14" screen, no mini-led -macbook 16" seems like a good option but I returned it because it's just too heavy more unbearably so than the previous 15" I spent 3 years with. It is also already deprecated since the 10th gen upgrade and mini-led are around the corner

So now all the MacBook Pro 13's have no physical function keys?

Yep. You can get a MBA though. Not nearly as "airy" as they used to be, given that the screen is 13" too and you can get a decent amount of RAM in there. CPU still isn't great, but probably you're not doing super CPU intensive stuff with a 13" MBP.

The MacBook Pro with function keys was retired when they introduced the new MacBook Air. So this is now a new development.

I literally just bought a new 13" macbook pro. It arrived just a few days ago! Do anyone know if they have any type of exchange service or am i stuck with the one a bought?

you should have a couple of weeks to return the item, if you still have the original packaging I think

You can return anything you bought online within 14 days, no need to provide a justification.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...

I have to work with a Windows/Linux laptop and a MacBook Pro. It's very inconvenient when the MBP keyboard doesn't have Home, End, PageUp, PageDown and Delete.

Fn+arrow keys and Command+arrow keys will give you most of the function you want.

Command+Delete functions like the Delete key you are used to.

I agree, however most of the hn crowd learnt to type on that keyboard layout so you won't have much sympathy here. Thank goodness for Lenovo keyboards.

I am surprised to don't see so much difference between the 13" and 16" prices. Other than that, good movement from Apple, listening to what the people wanted.

I just don't understand what market Apple thinks they are targeting with the past few years of MacBook Pro releases, and I say this while on an early 2015 13" Pro.

If the Pro line is truly meant for professionals what does apple think they are accomplishing by getting rid of features that set them apart from the competition?

As a former Thinkpad x220 user the 2015's keys are not as good but they are good enough. When I contrast that to the absolutely horrendous keyboard on the 2017 model, I long for 2015 style keys with their somewhat existent key travel. The fact that a dedicated escape key was missing on the first keyboard revision baffles me, and makes me wonder what is going on in product design at Apple. I have not experienced their newest revision of the keyboard on the 16" so I cannot speak to that, but it seems to be received more positively than the 2017 model.

If the touch-bar were there to compliment the function keys instead of replace them I don't think it would be nearly as hated. As alexggordon mentioned, with BTT[0] much of the functionality of missing function keys is restored but why is third party software needed to give back full functionality on what is supposed to be a laptop for professionals?

On the IO port front, the loss of MagSafe charging is still felt, and while there are MagSafe like adapters for USB-C, I ask myself why does each new generation feel full of unneeded and unwanted compromise? Why can't Apple just stop at replacing the USB-3.0 & Thunderbolt ports with USB-C? A dongle for ethernet makes sense, a dongle for what seems to be everything is madness.

And what is Apples obsession with making their laptops ever-thinner? The Pro's are not netbooks from the early 2010s that you can fit in your pocket. Their obsession with making each generation thinner seems to cause thermal throttling, with the culprit always being... insufficient cooling. Shocker. Yet this is supposed to be laptop for professionals?

This isn't to say there haven't been improvements. Thinner bezels are always welcome and Apple clearly puts a great amount of thought into their displays and it does not go unnoticed. In addition MacBooks only seem to get better at increasing battery life at levels above the competition.

For the time being the it just works factor of Mac OS and being able to use almost any linux package/program thanks to homebrew will probably keep me as a user, but I can't help but notice their Pro lineup seems to less and less useful for professionals and makes me wonder who Apple thinks wants any of these changes.

[0] https://folivora.ai/

So the question becomes now: who is buying this instead of a thinkpad/Linux equivalent laptop? Who is coming back to OSX now that the keyboards are better?

The Apple Tax is becoming so ridiculous even the hardcore fans are getting pissed..

The price/specs don't make any sense even when compared to Apple a couple years ago.

The price/specs don't make any sense even when compared to Apple a couple years ago.

Two years ago the prices were $1299, $1499, $1799 and $1999 for the off the shelf models. Currently the prices are $1299, $1499, $1799 and $1999.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180503185423/https://www.apple...

For the ppl complaining about the ESC key, real vi users use a separate racing wheel with haptic feedback to get back to normal mode.

I was hoping for a 14" version. Let's wait for the next version either with ARM or AMD CPUs and better graphics.

Happy to see they're back to having a physical escape key. That's my biggest gripe with my current 13".

If only it had an AMD processor and Nvidia GPU, then we might see some actual improvement to user experience.

Someone else has probably mentioned this, but looks like they're trying to sell off old inventory (8th gen, two ports, etc.) with the lower spec versions. Hopefully they'll refine the product line once those are all gone.

Coming from a 2010 MacBook Pro, I'll be stoked to snag one of the higher end 13" Pros sometime this year. The 16" just isn't portable enough for my taste unfortunately.

Why is anyone excited about a new MacBook? I'd be excited to know they make them last over 5 years.

₹200,000 indian rupee for 16inch model which is 2399$, ₹175,000 for 1799$ 13inch. Bad pricing will pass.

:/... no 14”. Still not a a proper FaceTime camera. Maybe they’ll announce something during wwdc

Insane how poor the MacBook line cameras are for the machine price, even the $400 Surface Go puts them to shame.

The base 1299 model offers a three year old punt 1.4GhZ 8th gen processors and DDR3 ram .

"the new inverted-“T” arrangement".

ROFL.

> Better Trackpad

I've been using Dell for the last 6 months. This is the deal-breaker for me.

really gotta love how "Physical Escape Key" is a feature they promote now.

No one will acknowledge the use of "faster performance"? Alright.

Someone reading this thread would wonder how Apple is still in business.

Honestly, the take away from these discussions is to get a desktop PC.

I hope one day you grow as a person, and realise different people have different requirements, preferences and trade-offs.

I value macOS, I work away from a desk more often than on one, and my past Mac computers have lasted for longer than any other commodity desktop or laptop.

I'm currently replacing a perfectly functional 2011 MBP, and only because I have some bonus money, otherwise it would have gone another couple years without issue.

I realize that, of course. No need to insult me.

Wait...is that a hard escape key on there?! Emacs users rejoice! :)

Vim users too.

Man, it's a really good thing none of us are using video conferencing much these days, otherwise it would be really embarrassing for Apple to release a laptop with a 720p webcam.

I like how dota2 gameplay was featured on there!

No 14” ... why even bother? Major fail by Apple.

Is there any good use of touch bar for coders?

simply no.

I went in trying to be as charitable as possible, looked for workflows that might have opened up.

Unfortunately the answer is no.

The problem with trying to find a use for the touchbar can be illustrated with what the touchbar does when you're using Google Chrome: it shows you the current URL, and tapping it focuses Chrome's navigation bar. So it's basically a completely pointless round-trip from screen->touchbar->screen.

Any compelling touchbar feature has to somehow overcome that massive drawback.

Still the shitty touch bar - no thank you.

What's the CPU model number and TDP?

Can we comment on the web design on the page?

That mouseover highlight and share option is obnoxious. It's strange that Apple went that route.

Wake me up when the new Macbook has more ports and better cooling.. the other improvements seem a little superficial.

I actually think it’s just a way to get the ordered components out of inventory.

No big announcement, 14” will come at wwdc

I’d love to hear anyone’s experience who has recently switched away from, or to a Mac.

Nice to see pro class features:

- 32 GB Ram is overdue, nice speed.

- 4 years to get a working keyboard that is reliable.

Missing pro class features:

- Selling a 10th gen CPU 9 months after it’s released at full price is disappointing.

- No 6 core option like Dell or Lenovo.

- The MacBook Pro is the first laptop that has claimed its pro, but has never offered its own docking solution. Surprising for a company that likes proprietary connectors. Professionals quite often dock to a desktop setup.

- Not sure if the battery life can be trusted on the i7. I have yet to own an i7 13” MBP that delivers battery life as advertised.

- Not going to a 14” (or waiting for the last possible moment to switch to 14”) is a potential big miss. Lenovo and others have this figured out.

- Unlike the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro did not evolve its 13” design to offer something. The a Dell XPS 13 seems to have and offers a compelling package.

Having carried a MacBook for the better part of 15 years.. I switched when Windows Vista arrived and destroyed my computing environment with forced upgrades, In terms of performance and reliability, the 2014 13” i7 MacBook Pro could be the peak of Apple laptop quality and performance.

After 2015, the MBP continued its eating disorder obsession with thinness, which invited thermal issues as well as a keyboard that was never really ready for the real or professional world.

Current setup:

I purchased a i9 15” MBP a little over a year ago with 32 GB RAM. The ram has been nice, otherwise its generally been underwhelming and disappointing.

When picking this up, the Apple employee asked if I was excited because he personally hadn’t see many of this spec sold. I mentioned to him after ones 10th or 15th laptop, you are more buying the death of a new device down the road.. than buying a new laptop... and I wasn’t looking forward to migrating.

So far, it has needed a replaced screen, battery, keyboard. It suffers like many from the phantom kernel_task cpu issue if you plug the power and an accessory on the left side of the laptop that instantly goes away if you plug in one on each side. I might tolerate this from an inferiorly priced machine. I carry a large PD battery to top up the 3-4 hour battery life and keep the laptop charged when carrying it between meetings.

I wonder if it’s normal for so many of my MacBooks to have gone in for repair, so many times, even though they remain in flawless condition physically years later.

I don’t buy a laptop, I buy a warranty and a guarantee of a working laptop so my laptop is can become invisible, just work, etc.

All this.. to say I tried out Ubuntu 20 last week on a Lenovo Tiny PC. Which turned into 2 monitors. And multiple days of higher productivity than I may have had in a very long time. No fighting with docker, only using. It feels like the clarity older OS X environments provided.

I expected to try out windows again because I like the Surface Pro so much.

Now I’m only using the MacBook for business/research/communication tasks, no more external screens or keyboard, and no longer development and it’s much more enjoyable to use.

I’m seeing many who were early converts to the Mac moving back to X1 Carbons and XPS 13’s and the comments here are encouraging for me to consider other options.

Until you remove the touchbar and let me run Linux on it, I will NOT give you a penny.

Until you remove the touchbar and let me run linux on it, I will NOT give you a penny.

I recently got an 11" ipad pro with the new keyboard/touchpad. After using it for some time, I don't think I'll have a need for a personal mpb anymore. I have a tower with windows/linux and a 1080ti for heavy lifting when needed. There's just a freeing feeling to getting a device with a small form factor that can be just a screen if needed.

I'm in a similar boat, really enjoy using my older iPad pro. I'm more interested in a desktop for a daily driver that I can also remote into from the iPad. Still need Apple hardware because of my work. The 5K retina iMacs are awfully tempting.

That would be a similar workstation that I have, just as a iMac instead of a tower. For portability, ease, and ability to switch between a "dock" mode and a tablet mode I'm all-in with the ipad now.

What's with the 8th gen processors on the first two models? also the Dota2 screenshot is cool hah

It's unbelievable, and feels like potentially misleading advertising.

My 2019's MBP 16" can't really run Dota2 at the native resolution. The framerate is fluctuating widely, and it frequently drops to less than 30fps for me - without any real action going on and cosmetics equipped. And that's on supposedly much more performant Radeon Pro 5500M, not Intel Iris Plus.

Also, not really cool as the "player" isn't even pretending to play.

Sort of dual signalling going on "if you know what's going on in the picture - you get that it's all BS, otherwise look - you can play* games* on this laptop! shiny!"

summary: minimally updated cpu and storage. AND WE PUT BACK THE ESCAPE KEY LOT AT THE NICE PICURE (but don't us to explicitly say it). also we swear the keyboard might be fixed this time and we will leave you hanging if there's still a headphone port.

Interesting to see that coding is recognised on the landing page, something that a lot of people here thought that Apple tried to distance from.

>there is still no physical escape key

Yes there is, it's clearly there in every picture of the keyboard.

My apologies, my eyes glossed over the tilde key and thought that was the end. My enthusiasm has returned!

The page says there is a dedicated esc key on the newly designed keyboard

I see $1,299 translates to £1,299 as usual in the Apple world.

I'm glad hipsters have a new toy to sit in coffee shops with while browsing the web. I truly don't understand why people put up with them.

You don't understand why people put up with Apple consumers? Or Apple the company? Or specifically MacBook Pros?

4 cores? Pro? 2020? lol

EDIT:

maybe 4 cores are enough for development using non-compiled languages, and if you don't use Chrome and Electron apps, and not running several VMs and docker containers.

Some programming languages like Julia and Erlang/Elixir will happily use all the cores available on your laptop to speed up calculations, run builds, tests and other development tasks.

4 cores is actually more than enough to do almost all development. I work on a four core PC right now (i7-4770k) running Linux and couple VMs and containers, one VM dedicated to running Windows 10 which is in turn running Citrix client. I have two 4K monitors and bunch of hardware. I work on webapps, backend software, have couple IDEs running at the same time and probably Zoom session, not to mention huge amount of Chrome tabs.

It all works without hitch and if there is a hitch it is typically Chrome or Gnome misbehaving, not lack of cores.

Yes. Now just avoid running those poor Electron apps which actually impact battery life on all laptops. No user shouldn't need to get a laptop with a i7 CPU with 16GB to 32GB of RAM and a high end GPU to run your over-engineered chat app.

I get this all the time with my MacBook that I use for development. Run 1 or 2 of them is fine, but 10 or more at the same time and it will run the machine down to the ground.

Okay. So today most desktop apps are electron.

The advantage is that it allows people to make windows, Mac and Linux apps with ease.

They're not going to go anywhere unless there is a better alternative.

Coding native is a waste of money in most cases. Especially for a chat app.

Hardware manufactures sell computers. The computers they sell need to be able to perform well on the applications that exist today.

There's no point saying the apps are shitty if the laptop they're trying to sell doesn't run well with it.

Maybe today laptops should have 16gb of ram at a minimum.

AMD's resurgence has shown Intel in some cases dropping the price of their CPUs by 50%. Maybe cheaper computers need to be more powerful.

They're not going anywhere and it's only going to get more prevalent when Apple moves to ARM. Can't see Catalyst apps being a compelling alternative to the benefits of Electron to any team who has to answer to a budget.

I don't agree with it ideologically because I moved to mac because I loved how Cocoa apps felt, but honestly Microsoft has the right idea in just embracing it because it isn't going anyway any time soon so best just to make sure they run well on your platform.

I find compilation painful even on my desktop, and cost of operation is still on my mind when I’m trying to do a quick demo to people. I feel like people here who are professionals make enough to justify buying away these latencies and distractions.

I agree with your last sentence. As with any tools, it depends on your usage.

But saying that 4 cores is ridiculous misses the truth. A lot of people, myself included, use 4 core machines completely successfully.

If you need more, there is absolutely nothing wrong with paying more for more powerful machine. It's just not every PC on the market has to have absolutely most powerful configuration available at the moment.

Unless you are using your laptop as a server or using a boatload of electron apps, 4 high performance x86 cores are more that enough in a 13-inch laptop.

After upgrading from a mid-2014 13 inch MBP (8GB Ram, Dual-core i5) to a MBP 16inch (32gb ram, i9 5.0ghz Turbo Boost), apps like Slack and VS Code really do run a lot faster and I have many more apps open than I used to before. Maybe I could have done well with just the i7 and 16gb of ram, but it's good to know that this computer should be good for web development for the next five years.

I think we are jaded to the point that we forget that 2 cores and 4 threads was the norm just five years ago.

I just looked to check. Still no physical Fn keys, still shallow butterfly keyboard. That's a pass.

Hopefully Apple comes to its senses some day and creates a computer that is designed for actual work, where a single beard follicle is not going to make it unusable midday.

The Magic Keyboard uses scissor switches, not butterfly.

And how do these scissors work with beard follicle? It's all the same to me, really, if it can't survive piece of hair. For the past 20 years I have been using Thinkpads.

My last one is T440s which I bought immediately it was available and still wait for it to die. I would like a MBP but seeing what the Thinkpad went through I just don't think so. I spilled stuff on it not once but twice, once hot latte and once a liter of mineral water in a bag. I had to open it and stand it on its side while open so that water drains out of it... Then I had to disassemble it and dry individual leaves of which the screen is composed of.

I had to take the rest of the day off in both cases to save my laptop but other than that I was ready for work the next day, files intact, tools in place.

T440s also uses scissors like almost every laptop

Thinkpad keyboard is completely unlike Apple keyboards, however the technology is called. Just the key travel on Thinkpad is probably more than entire thickness of Apple keyboard.

Having both a macbook and a Thinkpad, the Thinkpad trackpad is absolutely horrendous to use.

Not butterfly, scissor.

No butterfly keyboard on these models. That, at least, is on its way out.

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